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Iran’s Rohani Leads Call To Aid Palestinians At NAM Meeting

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Iranian President Hassan Rohani has condemned the Israeli attacks on Gaza and called on the United Nations to step in to end the “massacre and genocide” of Palestinians.

Speaking in Tehran at the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement’s Ministerial Committee on Palestine, Rohani said the crisis in the Gaza Strip is being perpetuated by the silence of the international community and he accused the U.S. and the United Nations of turning a blind eye to the crimes committed in Gaza.

The attendees observed a minute of silence in memory of the victims in Gaza and spoke out against the “invasion” of Gaza through “the blatant massacre of civilians and destruction of civilian facilities including infrastructure, residential areas, hospitals, schools, mosques and even aid and media groups.”

In the opening speech, President Rohani drew attention to Israel’s refusal to allow delivery of humanitarian aid including food, drugs and medical equipment, and he condemned the UN for failing to speak out against Israel’s actions.

Meanwhile, as the current head of the Non-aligned Movement, President Rohani called on the members to use their international capacities and strengths to take an effective step to resolve the crisis.

He stressed that the continuation of the crisis is due to the international community’s silence about “the root of the conflict, the occupation of Palestinian land by the Zionist regime.” He added that Iran is using all available means to “end the oppression of Palestinians.”

Abbas Araghchi, the deputy foreign minister, told reporters that all of the meeting’s participants are calling for an end to the blockade on Gaza and the routes used to supply it.

The post Iran’s Rohani Leads Call To Aid Palestinians At NAM Meeting appeared first on Eurasia Review.


Foreign Jihadists And Lone Soldiers: Creating New Social Faultline? – Analysis

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A 27-year-old Indian-origin soldier in the Israeli army, Sergeant First Class Barak Refael Degorker died on July 26 after being hit by a mortar shell near the Gaza Strip border.

He belonged to the Bene-Israel community, which has its origins in the Mumbai region, and with a strength of around 50,000 it is the largest Indian community in Israel. However, Sergeant Degorker was not the first foreign-origin soldier of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to be killed in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza. Amongst the IDF soldiers killed in the current round of fighting (Operation Protective Edge) there are two soldiers from the US and one from France so far.

Earlier in the month, Israel had mourned the deaths of the two American-origin soldiers in the Gaza war: Sergeant Sean Carmeli, who was raised in Texas, and Los Angeles native Sergeant Max Steinberg. All the three sergeants were considered heroes in Israel and their funerals were attended by thousands of people. Though they all served in the IDF, there is a distinction between Sergeant Degorker and Sergeants Carmeli and Steinberg; the latter two were “lone soldier(s)”.

In the IDF, a lone soldier (Hebrew: Hayal Boded) is defined as a serviceman or woman without parents in Israel. They are not Israeli citizens, yet have come not just from the US, but also from countries as far away as Australia, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa to serve in the IDF. According to the IDF, 8,217 foreign-born personnel enlisted between 2009 and August 2012. The most represented countries of origin were Russia and the US, with 1,685 and 1,661 recruits respectively. The motivation for these young men and women to make this major decision in their lives is the belief in Israel; the land which through history has been home to their faith. In many cases the first interaction of these people with the Jewish state is through the Birthright programme.

Birthright Programme

Taglit-Birthright Israel, also known as Birthright Israel or simply Birthright, is a not-for-profit educational organization that sponsors free ten-day heritage trips to Israel for Jewish young adults, aged 18–26.Taglit is the Hebrew word for discovery. The participants, most of whom are visiting Israel for the first time, are encouraged to discover new meaning in their personal Jewish identity and connect with Jewish history and culture during the trip. Since the winter of 1999, the year of commencement of the programme, more than 400,000 young people from 64 countries have participated in it; 80% of participants have been from the US and Canada. The funding for the programme comes from a consortium of philanthropic funds, Jewish communal groups and the government.

Lone Soldiers

About 5,800 of the soldiers currently serving in the IDF have been granted the status of lone soldiers. 50% of them come from families who do not live in Israel, and the other 50% are Israelis who are unable to live with their families due to a variety of reasons. Roughly half of all the lone soldiers serve in combat units. In the last three years approximately 40% of Lone Soldiers who enlisted joined combat units and about 20% served with combat-support units. At any given time there are an average 2,800 lone soldiers serving in the IDF, and according to an estimate 950 new lone soldiers join the IDF each year.

Lone soldiers receive various forms of support from the IDF, Israeli government ministries and other organizations. They receive a higher basic salary from the IDF, as well as financial assistance from the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption and the Ministry of Housing and Construction. They are also given help with housing, and the right to extra time off, including 30 days per year to visit family overseas.

Lone soldiers after completion of service with the IDF do not serve as reservists and are blocked from re-joining the army. During Operation Protective Edge as many former Israeli soldiers who on being ordered to return to army reserves have refused to do so, some ex-lone soldiers are asking the Israeli government to allow them to return to Israel and rejoin the IDF.

On the other hand, we have jihadists particularly in Syria and Iraq, recruiting people from all over the world to join them in the war against all those they consider are against concept of Islam. A study released in December 2013 by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, estimated that there are up to 11,000 foreign fighters in Syria. Other reports put the number at 15,000, of which up to 2-3,000 fighters come from Western European countries (including over 100 from the US). The recruits now come from counties such as Indonesia, India and China.

Assessment

Despite deep disparity amongst the two concepts one cannot help but compare the fallout of jihadist recruitment with that of the lone soldiers, especially in transmitting perceived angst from battlefields to their near and dear ones and communities back in their home countries.

After satellite television, it is currently the social media with its versatility and reach which is connecting communities and common people more directly and in near real time with developments in global hotspots and conflict zones. ISIS and other jihadist organisations have been resorting to Skype and twitter to fill its ranks. The presence of foreign jihadists and lone soldiers makes this information flow from the conflict zones to relatives and the community more credible, intimate and impressionable.

As the source of information now becomes more trusted and easy to associate, the information provided is consumed and exchanged in a manner that is more emotional and convincing. This increases the impact on communities far more than what probably television or social media can achieve. Consequently the potential of such information flowing from conflict zones to radicalise and polarise communities is significant. This has increased the area and the number of people influenced by a conflict

The security impact of the multi-national nature of sub-conventional conflicts has been grasped and efforts to safeguard are being evolved and effected. But multi-religious cultural/ethnic countries such as US, India are waking up to a new reality- having their citizens locked in combat with opposing sides. Jews against Muslims, Shia-against Sunnis etc fighting in foreign lands for causes agnostic to national interest, yet creating for communities in their home countries- a fault-line.

This article appeared at South Asia Monitor.

The post Foreign Jihadists And Lone Soldiers: Creating New Social Faultline? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Uran Krasniqi: I Don’t Expect Haradinaj To Govern Differently From Thaçi – Interview

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Uran Krasniqi is a journalist and a political analyst who writes for the largest newpaper in Kosovo: “Koha Ditore”. Previously, Krasniqi has worked for many years in another newspaper “Epoka e Re” (New Era) and the news agency “KosovaLive”.

ER: How is the perception of the bilateral relations of Kosovo with the United States by Kosovo’s people?

Uran Krasniqi: The relations between the United States and Kosovo in fact are perceived as they truly are where the US continues to be a country with great influence over the politics and government of Kosovo. United States and its partners have a tremendous contribution towards establishing the Republic of Kosovo, in its international recognition and guiding its public policies after establishing its independence in 2008.

These relations are considered by the largest Albanian population of Kosovo as connected with the history and the role that United States has played in the last two decades. President Wilson was instrumental in securing the Independence of Albania based upon the principle of the auto determination by nations, later President George H. W. Bush threatened Milosevic had he invaded Kosovo, later George W. Bush on 2007 stated that there is no other solution for Kosovo except its independence. But a moment that has had a great impact on the relations with US is the bombing of Belgrade by the Clinton Administration in defense of the Kosovo population. So there is a feeling of gratitude just like we as human beings feel for someone who has saved our lives. The majority of Albanians in Kosovo for historical reasons do not feel safe with their northern neighbor, Serbia, while being afraid that had it not been for the West, Kosovo would be invaded again by Belgrade. So the United States is truly a shield for Kosovo in order to defend herself from Serbia, the later for as much as she wants to be integrated in the European Union engages in strategic discussions with Russia, while planning bilateral military exercises.

The admiration for the United States can easily be experienced in every anniversary of Kosovo’s independence and such a support is clearly recognized, but this year I have seen the same atmosphere even during the World Cup in Brazil, where every time that the US soccer team has played my countrymen have cheered for this soccer team. In other words seen from this point of view the majority of Albanians justify the role of United States played in the politics of Kosovo. For me this approach is understandable. There are two very small groups formed by Albanians who have various opinions on the United States. There are Independent groups which consider the United States’ role with Albanians and Kosovars as a suppressing power of the rights of other nations, who accept the US role in relation to Albania and Kosovo and after the war, have supported the corrupted regimes. For me it human the desire for a world where people and nations are not suppressed, but the Albanian population of Kosovo were not able to escape from suppression as a result of being subjugated by others, the reality continues to be as it is and Albanians cannot change it.

In regards to the points of view that Washington maintains the corrupted elite in power, to me it is not the fault of the U.S., because I think that political leaders are the fruits of an elections process regardless of the mistakes that are made and Washington wants to cooperate with Kosovo and work together with the public elected officials and are in power. However there is another group, a Muslim group that belongs to religious view imported in Kosovo after the war which does not consider the United States as a trust worthy partner in the international arena. This group beyond its superficiality seems not to recognize that the role of the United States in liberating and securing the independence of Kosovo. Moreover in their views Kosovo is not independent neither is liberated and on these issues they feel that Kosovo would gain its role only if Sharia Law would dominate the country. For me such an approach must not be accepted.

ER: It seems that Kosovo’s Foreign Policy is very slow and the recognition of its Independence has been stalled, isn’t this a wrong conclusion?

UK: The Foreign Policy of Kosovo is efficient only when the U.S. and European influence is exerting pressure and is encouraging the local leaders. Many countries in the World have recognized the independence of Kosovo only because the United States and European Union Member countries have made formal requests. But when we are dealing with such situations it’s impossible to pretend that the current results in respect to the recognition of Kosovo’s statehood abroad have nothing to do with Kosovo’s Foreign Policy. The Foreign Policy is the mirror image of Domestic Policy. Those politicians who make domestic policy in Kosovo belong to political parties that have “democracy” in their official party names, but belong to parties that exist without a roadmap program and lack inner and open debate within their ranks. An important criterion for career advancement in politics is to be a servant to political leaders.

Many of them are involved in corruption scandals. While being the products of such a context, their everyday logic is not guided by a national strategic plan but from the momentary tactics while finding themselves in difficult situations. This phenomenon characterizes the foreign policy of Kosovo. Lately we had many leaders in the implementation of Foreign Policy who never got along. We had a Deputy Prime Minister who was a business leader who would come out in a press conference and state that foreign official governmental notes would be issued and were sent to his address, but at the same time was sharing with everyone how he had purchased a desk top for the President of the Republic of Mali. So this is openly an attempt to bribe a foreign leader. It is true that Kosovo now received notes of recognition in a very rare occasion. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs declares that there are 107 states, but always there have been problems in respect to the official correspondence with many countries. The recognition of Kosovo’s independence is very complicated based on many factors. The Sovereign countries have their own reasons for not recognizing and unfortunately those are many.

Many countries are reserved in relation to the recognition of Kosovo’s Independence because our country is seen as a product of the United States and its partners; other countries are discouraged because of their minorities in their territories and are afraid that the latter would demand independence; and other countries that do not have a single interest; as well as other nations that are not familiar on where Kosovo is located on the map. I spoke only about one aspect of the Foreign Policy, but it has many problems and mishaps in other dimensions, including the lack of clear results with its conversations with Serbia, absence of any progress towards the European Union Integration in the same token many long lasting challenges in consulates and embassies abroad. Therefore I cannot say that you have reached a mistaken conclusion.

ER: What are some of the accomplishments of Hashim Thaçi’s government in 2010-2014?

UK: It is very difficult to admit and talk about a genuine accomplishment during the past four years. The general and local elections were held for the first time on the northern region of the country were Prishtina is not recognized as the central authority after Kosovo’s independence, however through the agreement of April 2013 the Serbian community was enabled to create the Association of Serbian Municipalities, such an act sets a precedent in not allowing Kosovo to implement its decentralization policies and hinders the functioning of the country as a whole. The so called highway of the nation, which connects Albania with Kosovo, has shorted the distance, but it has been a very secret process and has lacked transparency. Salaries are increased for the public sector, but such an action is deemed as an electoral action because it occurred very close to the elections date. The Electrical Energy Corporation of Kosovo was privatized on a very low price. The government says that there is an economic growth, reduction of unemployment and poverty levels, but other assessments prove the opposite. So there are some accomplishments that are highly contested by the general public and local analysts. The only true accomplishment is the wealth that Kosovo’s Government members have acquired during their term in office, but such a personal gain has nothing to do with the wellbeing of our countrymen and does not affect the wellbeing of our people.

ER: What has the government of Kosovo done on the war against corruption?

UK: In Kosovo every political party, before coming to power declares an open war to corruption, later they prepare a series of laws and bills against corruption practices, but I have never seen a real war against corruption. Immediately after the war we are government by corrupted politicians, but the justice system has never proved them guilty. In the 1990s, members of our political elite belonged in our average population and their wealth was the same as others. Today their monthly salaries do not justify the current life style they enjoy. They have built apartments, have purchased condominiums abroad, and have expensive cars and their kids study in private schools in and abroad. Just like anything else, the Justice System is controlled by the political elite and it’s normal that it would not fight corruption effectively.

ER: How was the organization of the 2014 general elections in Kosovo?

UK: At the voting day when the citizens placed their votes in the ballot boxes there were not reported any wrong doings. Compared to the elections of 2010 when it was said that there was a industrial robbery of votes, this time there have been even less occasions which may have damaged the credibility of the process. The first party that emerged as a winner from these elections was the Democratic Party of Kosovo and its leader Hashim Thaçi, which has governed in the last two terms. Indeed this was sad news for all those who disagree with Mr. Thaçi’s politics and were not willing to leave their country’s administration again on the hands of this political party. These people were upset because even though the previous government had not done a good job in running the country, they still emerged victorious. Many of them were upset with the other political parties that were not able to defeat Mr. Thaçi’s political party.

While looking at this situation and to justify their actions, the political parties in opposition gathered in unified opposition block and making it impossible for Mr. Thaçi to form a new government through the refusal of making an alliance with him. These political parties are handling the situation with the Constitutional Court and the later will decide on who will lead the Legislative Branch in order to open the road for the creation of the new government, even though it is admitted that there are two separate processes. The creation of an opposition front and refusing to govern together the country with the winning party there are no legal obstacles, but it does not seem to be a ‘fair play”. I am against such a practice of forming a government with those political parties that have lost the elections.

ER: What are your expectations if Mr. Ramush Haradinaj forms a new government?

UK: The government of Ramush Haradinaj has previously been tested in Kosovo. Haradinaj was a Prime Minister for one hundred days, and then he was called in Hague, later he returned while continuing his process in freedom in Kosovo. The government of his political party has been the same as the Democratic Party of Kosovo. Kosovo was on the top in the ranking done by many organizations that measure corruption. So in case Mr. Haradinaj becomes the next Prime Minister I do not expect that he will be much different that Mr. Thaçi. Meanwhile to other parties that have joined the coalition with Mr. Haradinaj’ s Alliance for the Future of Kosovo are the Democratic League of Kosovo and the Initiative for Kosovo, one of them has governed together with the Democratic Party of Kosovo in its first mandate and the other has emerged from the Democratic Party of Kosovo, led by a former Minister Accused of Corruption, Mr. Fatmir Limaj. Another reason why I do not expect miracles to happen has to do with the unethical way that these political parties come to power. I am not expecting ethical and good administration skills by those political parties that are not respecting the laws and not working transparently.

ER: How serious are the concerns of Washington with the language of religious hate transpiring in Kosovo?

UK: Such a concern is very real. Islam in Kosovo after the war is in a crisis. Many clerics have come from the Arabian countries and they have brought a variety of sects that have not been present in this country before. Representatives of these religious sects have problems with public figures upon which is built the identity of Albanians as well as with other religions. These religious sects have tendencies to bring their worshipers away from their privacy and to make it a public concern. Many members of these religions have gone into fighting in Syria.

The government of Kosovo is found to be unprepared in handling this situation. Until today only Police is dealing with this situation. The problem of radicalization of Islam in Kosovo must be handled by other institutions before having the Police deal with this threat. Kosovo’s police must pursue those who express hatred but also the Islamic Union of Kosovo must not allow the heavy recruitment of religious clerics upon its ranks who belong to those extremist sects, meanwhile the education system, public and private, must dedicate more time so that the youngster can learn more on the history of religion in Kosovo as well as understand the formation of a secular state in Kosovo. All of these actions must be taken before it becomes too late in order to take any action.

The post Uran Krasniqi: I Don’t Expect Haradinaj To Govern Differently From Thaçi – Interview appeared first on Eurasia Review.

And Then There Is The Middle East: The Lack Of An End-Game – Analysis

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By Amit Gupta

US’ policy towards the turmoil in the Middle East, or the lack of it, is shaped by three factors: traditional ties and alliances that continue in the post-Cold War era; the complex regional environment that has emerged after the so-called “Arab Spring;” and the events of 9/11 and Iraq that have forged American opinion on the subject. Yet none of these factors are any help in resolving the current political turmoil in the Middle East.

The US’ traditional ties in the Middle East have been with conservative Arab regimes, particularly in the Gulf, and with the state of Israel. Neither set of ties has changed much in the 21st century and if anything the ties with Israel have become even stronger since 9/11. International observers now, in fact, complain of an American media bias towards Israel in the current Gaza conflict that is much more marked than in past Arab-Israeli conflicts. The US is unlikely to change this relationship given the impact of the other two factors mentioned above.

The Arab Spring was a bombshell that policymakers, academics, and the American media were not expecting and a coherent American policy took some time to develop. What eventually emerged was a policy that supported a democratic transition with a preference for moderate political forces having their hands on the wheel. In none of the Arab countries did events play out the way policymakers expected. In Egypt, the military dismissed the legally elected president and was able to get its own candidate elected in a new election. In Tunisia, the nation which has seen the best potential transition to democracy, a conservative Islamic party came to power and has subsequently called for parliamentary and presidential elections in October/November 2014. In Libya, Colonel Gadhafi was removed from power but the country is now headed into a civil war and Western embassies, aid workers, and journalists are leaving the country en masse. In Bahrain, the fledgling movement for democracy was crushed by the authorities while in Yemen cosmetic changes were made to the regime. Iraq and Syria are engulfed in civil war and have seen the rise of ISIS – a group so brutal that even al Qaeda has had to disown them.

As for the Palestinians, the rise of Hamas was viewed with disquiet by Israel, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation on the West Bank, and by the conservative Arab states and even the new government in Egypt. Paradoxically, it is the non-Arab states – Turkey and Iran – that have been the most vocal supporters of Palestinian nationhood. Add to these concerns the fact that in the post-9/11 world the West is worried by the rise of radical groups in the Middle East, all these events only work to strengthen the relationship with Israel which is seen as a loyal ally. What then is the likely endgame for the US, if any, in the region?

Given the US’ economic concerns, the bill for the Afghan and Iraq wars, and war fatigue in the general population, long-term military intervention will be difficult to achieve. At the same time, the chaos in the Middle East makes it likely that the global powers are going to have to adopt a wait-and-see approach on what type of political formations emerge from this volatile situation. The one threat which might prompt US-led intervention is if oil supplies from the Gulf were threatened especially from Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states – although these states are as of now peaceful and in the case of the UAE and Qatar booming economically. Even in Iraq, despite the success of ISIS, oil exports continue since the insurgents are not targeting what could eventually be their cash cow – although this may lead to hard choices if ISIS continues to take over oil fields and thus impact on the international petroleum market. So wait-and-see becomes the narrative.

Israel-Palestine is more problematic since given Israeli domestic politics and security concerns, Palestinian political cleavages, and the fact that the US can do little to really pressure either side, it is likely that there will simply be more of the same. At some point of time both the Palestinians and the Israelis will agree to a ceasefire and it will be back to business as usual. Having said that, there are no realistic expectations of a political breakthrough in the near to medium-term. John Kerry, who has racked up more frequent flyer miles than Hillary Clinton, is seeing his carefully crafted peace solution crumble in the dust of Israeli air strikes and Palestinian missiles.

In conclusion, one should raise the point that in the digital age it is hard for the general public to focus on anything and, therefore, a consistent well-thought out American foreign policy becomes difficult. In this year American attention has wandered from the crisis in Crimea to Boko Haram kidnapping 300 schoolgirls to ISIS in Iraq to the Gaza strip. And there are still five months left in this year. Given this public attention deficit, expecting a long-term focus on any region is just not possible.

Amit Gupta
Associate Professor, Associate Professor, Department of International Security, USAF Air War College, Alabama and Visiting Fellow, IPCS

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Air Force or the Department of Defense.

The post And Then There Is The Middle East: The Lack Of An End-Game – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

India: First A Nuclear Deal And Now NSG Membership – Analysis

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By Shahzad Ali

Pakistan’s concerns relating to the negative effects of US-India nuclear deal have now been supplemented in a report by IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review published last week that establishes that India has enhanced its ability to significantly aggrandize its nuclear arsenal.

The imagery data incorporated in the report indicates a possible new Uranium Hexafluoride Plant at Indian Rare Metals Plant (IRMP) near Mysore. The report further added that this development would support new centrifuges that would substantially expand India’s Uranium enrichment capacity, most likely to facilitate the construction of an increased number of naval reactors to increase the country’s submarine fleet but potentially also to support the development of thermonuclear weapons. According to the assessment of the report, the new facility of uranium enrichment will become operational by mid-to-late 2015.

The deal, dubbed as Ian ndo-US civilian nuclear deal, has legitimately been seen as a regional destabilizing factor by Pakistan given the probability of usage of the benefit by India for non-peaceful purposes. From the onset, the international community led by the US has been following a discriminatory approach by not extending similar opportunities to Pakistan with regards to its nuclear cooperation with India despite the fact that the two countries have equal nuclear status. Pakistan, being in a dire need of civilian nuclear assistance, has consistently been putting up its case on multiple forums for a similar nuclear deal but it has been denied this opportunity by the international community with an equal consistency. This has resulted in the isolation of Pakistan in the domain of international nuclear cooperation.

Another concern that has lingered with the nuclear deal has been its capacity to become a destabilizing factor. It can result in nuclear destabilization in the region if India abuses the benefits of nuclear cooperation for civilian purposes and uses the advantages for non-peaceful military purposes. As Pakistan cannot afford to just stay idle in a case that India increases its highly enriched uranium, this can result in an ambitious nuclear arms race in the region. The recent findings of IHS Jane Intelligence review are alarming given the threat India’s capacity to highly enriched Uranium poses to the deterrence stability of the region.

Currently, the deterrence stability in South Asia is confronted by a multiple and grievous challenges, ranging from new limited war fighting concepts in the shape of Cold Start Doctrine, pro-active Operations (PAO) to acquisition of destabilizing technology i.e Ballistic Missile Defence System and massive increase in India’s conventional defence spending i.e over $43 billion against Pakistan’s little over $6 billion, have pushed the South Asian region towards perpetual instability.

This growing instability in the region is being engendered by a host of ambitious policies by India, in particular, and the unbalanced policies of International community in general. India, in the pursuance of its hegemonic aspirations, has consistently been building up its conventional military might with a colossal exodus of advanced weapon systems. Conventional military advancement is further exaggerating the asymmetric equation and acting as an impetus for an unending arms race in the region. Another factor that affects the nuclear deterrence stability is the Indian policy to launch a Ballistic Missile Defence system.

The international community led by the United States, on the other hand, has been following a biased policy vis-a-vis two nuclear countries of South Asia. Having failed to assess an equal nature of two nuclear capable countries, the US preferred India in concluding a nuclear deal and allowing it a bigger role in international nuclear regimes. This tendentious policy has been one of the factors that have been affecting the effective nuclear deterrence in the region.

The IHS Jane’s report happened to coincide with the NSG meeting by appearing a week before the meeting. In the meeting the major powers including the US put a strong case for India’s membership of the cartel by creating an exemption, as only the NPT signatories are eligible to get membership of NSG. If it is allowed to enter NSG, India will have a greater access to international trade of nuclear material. On one hand such a scenario will isolate Pakistan in nuclear club; it will have challenges for nuclear stability of South Asia on the other hand. If India is believed to have used the benefits of US-India nuclear deal in developing its nuclear arsenal, how the international community can guarantee that India would not use its access to global nuclear cartel in furthering its military ambitions?

Given the findings of the report, the beholders of International order and custodians of international peace should not only stop India’s possible membership of NSG but also create a mechanism of checks and balances so that India cannot use advantages of the nuclear deal in beyond the threshold of civilian use of nuclear energy. Moreover, it is pertinent that Pakistan should raise these issues on concerned forums so that nuclear destabilization of the region can be eschewed.

Shahzad Ali is a Research Fellow at South Asian Strategic Stability Institute Islamabad, Pakistan.

The post India: First A Nuclear Deal And Now NSG Membership – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

US Actions Strengthen Al-Qaeda In Yemen – NDC

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The decision by Western countries, especially the United States, to make Yemen their main military base lead to al-Qaeda getting stronger in the region, a representative of Yemen’s National Dialogue Committee (NDC) said in an interview with Rossiya Segodnya news agency.

“Al-Qaeda started to get stronger after 2009, when its various international branches decided to make Yemen their main base,” an NDC youth activist Nadia Abdullah said.

“We are also convinced that other countries contributed to that, thinking they would free themselves of the [al-Qaeda] presence by redirecting al-Qaeda militants to Yemen. There are Iraqis here, Saudis, Syrians, Afghans, and Pakistanis. They did a disservice to Yemen,” Abdullah added.

Al-Qaeda attacks on Yemen resumed after the Ramadan ended on July 27, with new casualties among both military forces and civilians, she said. The terrorist group mainly functions in Yemen’s southern provinces of Shabwa and Abyan, although its presence is also visible in some northern desert provinces and in central Yemen.

The Americans periodically use drones to attack al-Qaeda militants, the effect, however, is the opposite, Abdullah said.

“US actions only lead to the increase in the number of terrorists in Yemen. Al-Qaeda cannot be destroyed with drones. It would be better if the millions spent on drones went on new schools in Yemen,” she said.

The drones often kill civilians instead of militants, Abdullah said. Out of revenge, the relatives of those civilians, especially the young, join various extremist organizations, and create slogans such as “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

The NDC representative also said that although al-Qaeda had a wide presence in Yemen, its danger should not be overestimated, as government officials often use the organization’s brand to threaten the people, and military officials use it for “personal enrichment,” as international donors send large resources to fight terrorism.

Abdullah said the priority for Yemen was to establish the sovereignty of the state, put people in control over the government’s actions via a new constitution and disarm the formations, unofficial police and tribes that possess heavy weapons.

The post US Actions Strengthen Al-Qaeda In Yemen – NDC appeared first on Eurasia Review.

European Court Of Human Rights Delivers Powerful Condemnation Of US Torture Program And Poland’s Role Hosting CIA “Black Site” – OpEd

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Last week there was some extremely important news for those of us who have spent many long years hoping to hold senior US officials — up to and including former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney — accountable for approving and implementing a torture program in the “war on terror,” when the European Court of Human Rights unanimously condemned the US for implementing a program of extraordinary rendition and torture, and condemned Poland for its involvement in the program by hosting a secret torture prison — a CIA “black site” –  on its soil in 2002-03.

The rulings were delivered in the cases of two men, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi national accused of masterminding the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, and Abu Zubaydah (a Saudi-born Palestinian whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn), mistakenly described as al-Qaeda’s number 3 after his capture in March 2002. In its report on the rulings, the New York Times provided a more appropriate description of Zubaydah as someone who is “believed to have overseen the operation of guesthouses in Pakistan,” who vetted recruits and “provided letters of recommendation allowing them to be accepted for training at a paramilitary camp in Afghanistan” — which, it should be noted, was not affiliated with al-Qaeda.

Both men are currently held at Guantánamo, where they have been since September 2006, but they were held for over four years in “black sites” where they were subjected to torture, including the site in Poland that the European Court of Human Rights highlighted in its rulings.

The existence of the prison was first exposed in November 2005, and I have been writing about it since 2006, although the Polish authorities have refused to officially acknowledge its existence. Nevertheless, an investigation into the prison began in Poland in March 2008, and al-Nashiri and Zubaydah — and a third man, Walid bin Attash — were given “victim status” as a result of that investigation between 2010 and 2013 (see here and here).

The rulings by the European Court of Human Rights followed a hearing in December, which I wrote about here, and an archive of my articles about European complicity in torture, primarily involving Poland, but also Romania and Lithuania, where “black sites” were also located, but where there has been greater resistance to investigations, can be found here.

As the Guardian described it, Poland “became the first EU country held to account for its involvement in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme” when the court “found it guilty of the unlawful detention and torture” of al-Nashiri and Zubaydah, by failing to prevent the two men from being subjected to “torture and inhuman or degrading treatment” after their arrival at the prison.

The court also ruled that the Polish government “had failed to conduct a proper investigation into the episode, and ordered it to pay €100,000 (£79,000) compensation to each of the men,” as the Guardian put it, adding that the rulings “are the first in a series of cases being brought against European states,” with Romania and Lithuania to follow. The court noted that the compensation was awarded because of the “extreme seriousness of the violations” of the European Convention on Human Rights, and also awarded Abu Zubaydah €30,000 costs.

At December’s hearing, the court heard that the prison both men were held at, at the Stare Kiejkuty military base in north east Poland, was codenamed “Quartz,” and that both al-Nashiri and Zubaydah, who had previously been held in Thailand, were flown there on the same executive jet in December 2002. Both men are amongst the three men the US has admitted subjecting to waterboarding (a form of controlled drowning and an ancient torture technique), the other being Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

As the Guardian noted, the judgment in the Abu Zubaydah case “recounted how he had described being repeatedly beaten, confined in a small box, and brought out to be repeatedly waterboarded.”

In Zubaydah’s words, taken from the account he gave to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, after his arrival at Guantánamo in September 2006, which was later leaked:

I was … put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The bed was then again lowered to horizontal position and the same torture carried out again with the black cloth over my face and water poured on from a bottle. I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless. I thought I was going to die.

In al-Nashiri’s case, the judgment described “how he had been kept naked, subjected to mock executions, hoisted by his wrists while his arms were shackled behind his back, and told that his mother would be sexually abused before him,” as the Guardian put it.

As well as condemning Poland for its involvement in the torture of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the court also made a point of noting that Zubaydah’s continuing imprisonment without trial at Guantánamo was “a flagrant denial of justice,” words that the US will presumably try to ignore, even though it applies not just to Zubaydah but to almost all of the 149 men still held — although not al-Nashiri, who, ironically, is on trial at Guantánamo, but is engaged in a protracted struggle to get the authorities to allow evidence of his torture to be discussed.

In another blow not just for Poland but for the US, The court found that “the rendition programme was completely illegal,” as the Guardian described it, because its rationale had been “specifically to remove those persons from any legal protection against torture and enforced disappearance and to strip them of any safeguards afforded by both the US constitution and international law.”

The court also spelled out what it thought of Poland’s involvement, calling it “inconceivable” that plans “could have landed in Poland,” and the CIA “could have operated the prison,” without the awareness of the Polish government — as Senator Josef Pinior has long maintained (and as I wrote about in 2012).

The court stated, “It is also inconceivable that activities of that character and scale, possibly vital for the country’s military and political interests, could have been undertaken on Polish territory without Poland’s knowledge and without the necessary authorisation being given at the appropriate level of the state authorities.”

In addition, the court ordered the Polish government to “seek assurances from the US that Nashiri will not face the death penalty” in his trial by military commission, knowing full well, I am sure, that, when charges were referred against al-Nashiri, in September 2011, the Pentagon stated, “The Convening Authority referred the charges to a capital military commission, meaning that, if convicted, Al-Nashiri could be sentenced to death.”

The court also criticized Poland for its prosecutor-led investigation, which, the Guardian noted, has “faced accusations that it has been drawn-out and ineffective,” although it should be noted that the US’s absolute refusal to cooperate has not helped matters. However, the court criticized Poland for having “failed to provide an effective remedy,” adding that its attitude to the investigation also “amounted to a breach” of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Responding to the ruling, Joseph Margulies, who is one of Abu Zubaydah’s lawyers and a visiting professor of law and government at Cornell University, told the New York Times that, the ruling was “a seminal decision that would help force a public reckoning in Europe and the United States about the secret rendition program and its tactics,” as the Times put it.

Margulies said, “It’s the first time a court has condemned a European state for its role in the rendition program. From top to bottom, the case is a comprehensive condemnation of the CIA, the black-site program and Poland’s role in it.”

Amrit Singh of the Open Society Justice Initiative, which represents al-Nashiri and produced a major report on the rendition and torture program last year, said the ruling “ended the impunity for those engaged in abuses connected with the rendition program,” as the Times described it. “In stark contrast to US courts that have closed their doors to victims of CIA torture,” she said, “this ruling sends an unmistakable signal that these kind of abuses will not be tolerated in Europe, and those who participated in these abuses will be held accountable.”

For the Polish president, spokeswoman Joanna Trzaska-Wieczorek admitted that the ruling was “embarrassing for Poland,” and called it “a burden both in terms of our country’s finances as well as its image,” although she did not rule out an appeal. That, however, strikes me as unlikely.

What needs to happen now is for the Polish ruling to have a tangible impact on the imminent release of an edited and redacted version of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s damning report on the torture program, and for Romania and Lithuania also to face condemnation from the European Court of Human Rights. It is not time for President Obama to try and brush it all under the carpet once more by conceding, as he did on Friday, “We tortured some folks,” but adding, “it is important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had,” because “a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.”

As Article 2.2 of the UN Convention Against Torture (which Ronald Reagan signed) states, “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

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Israeli Deceptions Revealed In Story Of ‘Kidnapped’ Soldier – OpEd

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By Jonathan Cook

A single incident at the weekend – the reported capture by Hamas on Friday of an Israeli soldier through a tunnel – illustrated in stark fashion the layers of deception Israel has successfully cast over its attack on Gaza.

On Sunday, as the army indicated it would start limited withdrawals, Israel claimed Hadar Goldin was dead, possibly buried in a collapsed tunnel as Israel bombarded the area in which he was seized. His family said he was being left behind.

Israeli officials or media did not view Hamas’ operation dispassionately. Goldin was not “captured” but “kidnapped” – as though he was an innocent seized by opportunistic criminals.

As occurs so often, many western journalists followed Israel’s lead. The London Times’ front page blared: “Kidnapped in Gaza”, while the Boston Globe called him the “abducted Israeli soldier”.

From western reactions, it was also clear the soldier’s capture was considered more significant news than any of the massacres of Palestinian civilians over the past weeks.

Israel’s cynical calculus – that one soldier is more valuable than large numbers of dead Palestinian civilians – was echoed in the diplomatic and editorial corridors of Washington, London and Paris.

Misleading too was the general agreement that, in attacking a group of soldiers in Rafah and seizing Goldin, Hamas had violated the first moments of a 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire.

The Washington Post reported on the circumstances as a Hamas suicide bomber emerged from a tunnel to explode his vest, killing two soldiers, and Goldin was pulled into the shaft. “On Friday morning, Israeli troops were in the southern Gaza Strip preparing to destroy a Hamas tunnel, said Israeli military officials. Suddenly, Palestinian militants emerged from a shaft.”

CBS reporter Charlie D’Agata parroted the same Israeli briefings, also inadvertently exposing the central deceit. The soldier was “suspected of being kidnapped during an operation to clear tunnels – crucially, [officials] say, this happened after the ceasefire was supposed to take place.”

So if a ceasefire was in place, what were Goldin and his comrades doing detonating tunnels, tunnels in which Israel says Hamas is hiding? Were Hamas fighters supposed to simply wait to be entombed in their bunkers during the pause in hostilities? Or was Israel the one violating the ceasefire?

And then there was the explosion of military fury as Israel realized its soldier was missing. Israeli correspondents have admitted that the notorious “Hannibal procedure” was invoked: the use of all means to stop a soldier being taken alive, including killing him. The rationale is to prevent the enemy gaining a psychological advantage in negotiations.

The unleashing of massive firepower appeared designed to ensure Goldin and his captors never made it out of their tunnel, but in the process Israel killed dozens of Palestinians.

It was another illustration of Israel’s absolute disregard for the safety of civilians. At least three-quarters of the more than 1,700 Palestinians killed so far are non-combatants, while almost all Israeli casualties have been soldiers. This has been a pattern in all Israel’s recent confrontations.

Israel’s official justifications for taking the fight into Gaza have been layered with deceit too.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that Israel was dragged into a war of necessity. Barack Obama echoed him: Israel had a right to defend itself from a barrage of rockets fired out of Gaza. Later the pretext became Israel’s need to destroy the “terror tunnels”.

The logic is deeply flawed. Israel is occupying and besieging Gaza, conferring on its inhabitants a right under international law to fight for their freedom. How does the oppressor, the lawbreaker have a right to self-defence? If Israel objects to being scratched and bruised, it should stop choking its victim.

The degree to which Israel’s narrative of “self-defence” has come to dominate news coverage and diplomatic statements was revealed in a CNN interview. Anchor Carol Costello asked a baffled interviewee in all seriousness: “Why doesn’t Hamas just show Israel where these tunnels are?”

Equally significantly, Israel has obscured the truth that it picked this particular round of its ongoing confrontation with Hamas – and did so entirely cynically.

A BBC reporter recently confirmed with an Israeli police spokesman a rumor that had been circulating among military correspondents for weeks. The group behind the abduction in June of three Israeli teens in the West Bank – the trigger for Israel’s campaign against Hamas – was a lone cell, acting on its own.

Claiming precisely the opposite – that he had cast-iron proof Hamas was responsible – Netanyahu gave the army free rein to arrest hundreds of Hamas members and smash the organization’s institutions in the West Bank.

The crackdown created the necessary provocation: Hamas allowed Gaza’s factions to start firing limited numbers of rockets. Analyst Nathan Thrall noted recently that Hamas had impressed the Israeli army until that point by enforcing the ceasefire agreed with Israel 18 months earlier, even though Israel violated the terms by maintaining Gaza’s siege.

Now the rockets gave Netanyahu an excuse to strike.

So what was his real reason for going into Gaza? What were these many deceptions designed to hide?

It seems Netanyahu wanted to end a strategic threat: not Hamas rockets or tunnels, but the establishment of a unity government between Hamas and its long-time rivals Fatah. Palestinian unity risked reviving pressure on him to negotiate, or face a renewed and more credible Palestinian campaign for statehood at the United Nations.

But Hamas’ unexpectedly impressive martial display against Israel – killing dozens of soldiers, firing long-range rockets into Israel throughout, closing briefly the sole international airport, launching attacks into Israeli territory, and causing a loss to the economy estimated so far at more than $4bn  – may have changed the calculus again.

For the moment, Netanyahu seems to prefer to pull back Israeli soldiers rather than be forced under international pressure to negotiate with Hamas. He knows that its key demand will be that Israel end the siege.

But in the longer term, Netanyahu may need Palestinian unity, at least on his terms, to undermine Hamas’ gains.

As Israel began its attack on Gaza, Netanyahu turned his attention to the West Bank. He warned that there could never be “any agreement in which we relinquish security control” over it for fear that, given the West Bank’s larger size, Israel might “create another 20 Gazas”.

He was ruling out any hope of Palestinian statehood. A “demilitarized” entity, heavily circumscribed and absolutely dependent on Israel and the US, seems to be all that Israel will ever put on the table.

Allowing Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah into Gaza could justify loosening the siege. But only as long as Abbas agrees to remove Hamas’ military infrastructure and export to the coastal enclave the model he has established in the West Bank of endless accommodation to Israeli and US dictates.

- Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books).  He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. (A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.)

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Former White House Press Secretary Brady Dies

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The White House press secretary who was shot and suffered a devastating head wound in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, James Brady, has died at 73.

Brady’s family says he died Monday. They say he suffered from a number of health problems.

He was near President Reagan outside a Washington hotel when a gunman, John Hinckley, opened fire in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the president. Reagan was hit twice but recovered, while Brady was left paralyzed and permanently disabled.

Brady went on to conduct a life-long campaign for tighter U.S. gun controls. A U.S. law requiring background checks on gun buyers bears his name, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is named after him.

After the attack on March 30, 1981 just two months into Reagan’s presidency, Brady returned to the White House only briefly. But he was allowed to keep the title of presidential press secretary and his salary until Reagan left office in early 1989. The White House press briefing room is named after him.

Hinckley, the gunman, is now 59 and remains in U.S. custody at a psychiatric institution in Washington.

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India, China And Sri Lanka: The Uneasy Triangle – Analysis

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By Col. R. Hariharan

China’s President Xi Jinping has accepted a long-standing invitation from President Mahinda Rajapaksa to visit Sri Lanka sometime this year. The first-ever visit by a Chinese President to Sri Lanka will no doubt be hailed alas a crowning achievement for President Rajapaksa’s foreign policy which had been under siege for some time now.

The Chinese President’s Sri Lanka visit will be an emphatic statement of the growing strategic relationship between the two countries since the two countries signed a “Strategic Cooperative Partnership (SCP)” agreement during President Rajapaksa’s visit to China in May 2013.

The SCP covers a whole range issues including bilateral trade, investment, financial assistance and strategic cooperation providing to benefit both the countries. Sri Lanka’s recent selection of a Chinese firm a strategically important project for setting up a maintenance workshop for Sri Lankan air force in the vicinity of Trincomalee is an example of such cooperation.

But its progress could be cramped by positive turns in China’s uneasy relations with India. India’s newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emphasised trade and development in his agenda has whetted the appetite of China. It is probably discovering that its strategic and commercial stakes and expectations from India are much higher than Sri Lanka.

President Xi has been keen to cultivate the Narendra Modi-led BJP government as China is keen to enter India’s huge market for its products and invest in capital-starved infrastructure projects. As a result China’s strategic and commercial stakes and expectations from India now are much higher than from Sri Lanka. So we can expect President Xi to bear in mind India’s sensitivity to China’s expanding influence in Sri Lanka while planning his visit Colombo.

After Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping met for the first time during the recent BRICS summit meet in Fortaleza, Brazil a positive mood appears to have been created. Xi’s statement after the 80-minute meeting summed up the readiness of both China and India to build on the positive aspects of their troubled relationship.

Terming China and India as “long lasting strategic and cooperative partners, rather than rivals, Xi said he was “willing to work together with Prime Minister Modi to constantly enhance the China-India strategic and cooperative partnership to a higher level, and jointly safeguard our strategic period of opportunities, as well as peace and stability of the region and the world at large.”

Prime Minister Modi within the first month of assuming office has shown his eagerness to use China to kick start India’s development story. Modi conveyed his willingness to “maintain close and good working relationship” with President Xi. The Chinese President accepted Modi’s invitation to visit India. The visit is now scheduled for September 2014.

Indian business and industry are expecting a breakthrough in India-China economic relations during the Chinese President’s visit particularly in manufacturing, infrastructure and tourism industries. It is reasonable to expect China to ease restrictions on Indian business in China as a reciprocal gesture.

If this process is earnestly pursued, it could impact their relations with other South Asian countries also, despite their competing interests. And Sri Lanka will be one of the countries which will have to come to terms with it. Of course, it is probably too early to talk about it because both India and China have many more bridges to cross in their relationship.

President Rajapaksa expectations from Xi’s visit are likely to be manifold. Foremost among them would be an endorsement and assurance of support from the Chinese President for Rajapaksa’s stand against the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) sponsored international investigation on Sri Lanka’s alleged human rights aberrations and war crimes.

Though China’s support to Sri Lanka is well known, Rajapaksa needs Xi’s reiteration of support as the UNHRC investigation now under way is gaining more international attention despite Sri Lanka’s vehement objections. Rajapaksa’s diversionary tactics at home to whip up Sinhala nationalist sentiments seems to have ended disastrously after Buddhist fringe elements continued their attacks on Muslim minority. These added further fuel not only to the incompetence of the rulers to protect the minority but also showed the indifference of Rajapaksa administration to fundamental freedoms.

President Rajapaksa also needs the Chinese dignitary’s appreciation to boost his national image as more and more political leaders are demanding a reduction in executive president’s powers.

China emerged as an “all time friend” of Sri Lanka after it stepped in to provide arms and equipment to Sri Lanka during the Eelam War when India could not do so due to internal political compulsions. Since then both China and Sri Lanka have found increasing convergence in their strategic perceptions in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

Sri Lanka has positively responded to China’s keenness to promote ‘Maritime Silk Route’ (MSR) through the Indian Ocean as it strengthens Sri Lanka’s strategic identity to emerge as a maritime and finance hub and play pivotal role in the Indian Ocean region.

On the other hand China hopes to improve the economic viability of Chinese investments in ports like Hambantota in Sri Lanka, Chittagong in Bangladesh and Gwadar in Pakistan while legitimising its increased strategic role in IOR. Despite both China and Sri Lanka stressing the commercial nature of these developments, there is no doubt MSR would help PLA Navy to enhance its strategic reach and sustenance in the Indian Ocean.

In the post war period China attended to Sri Lanka’s huge financial needs for desperately needed finances for rebuilding the infrastructure in war torn areas. China liberally extended loans on commercial terms. Though India’s large economic aid was on much better terms, it was China that helped execute grandiose projects close to Rajapaksa’s heart. These include the Hambantota port and industrial complex, Matale airport etc. Colombo port capacity is being improved with a $500 million investment by a Chinese firm and Chinese assistance is on the cards for second phase development of Hambantota.

China is now poised to overtake India as Sri Lanka’s biggest trading partner despite Sri Lanka benefitting from the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with India which has helped India-Sri Lanka trade to grow to $ 5 billion by 2011. But even without the FTA, China’s bilateral trade figures reached nearly 50 per cent of the Indian figure.

However, trading with India is still advantageous for Sri Lanka as its export to India has grown six fold by 2013 unlike its minuscule share in trade with China. Sri Lanka hopes to rectify its lopsided trade with China when the SCP agreement comes into fully play and the FTA with China is signed.

China had been strictly adhering to its policy of non-interference in internal affairs of other countries. This has enabled it to consistently support Sri Lanka in the UNHRC over the war crimes allegations. As opposed to this India’s support had been hesitant and subject to internal pressures from Tamil Nadu. This has created a mental bias in Sri Lanka in favour of China. In the long term, increase in China’s role in Sri Lanka’s trade and diplomacy could affect India’s strategic prospects well beyond Sri Lanka in the IOR.

India has certain advantages in its complex relations with Sri Lanka. They are conditioned by their shared social, religious and cultural traditions over hundreds of years. Thanks to this, they have developed good understanding of each other’s needs and priorities. Over the years they have evolved large areas of cooperation in strategic security, trade and commerce, development assistance, communication, and in securing the national interests of both nations in the Indian Ocean.

This has enabled Sri Lanka to carefully balance its relations with both India and China. However Rajapaksa’s inability to see the big picture could make Sri Lanka’s balancing act more difficult particularly when India comes up with a holistic response designed to meet the Chinese challenge in IOR. Sri Lanka would require a greater level of understanding between China and India, for it to successfully continue its balancing act.

With Sri Lanka entering into the SCP Agreement with China and eager to join the MSR, ideally India should take advantage of the increased opportunities for cooperation with them, rather than being overawed by the negative aspects.

To move towards this ideal, in the near term India will have to overcome a number of security and political challenges. These limitations apply to China and Sri Lanka as well.

Prime Minister Modi will have to recalibrate India’s policy in Sri Lanka to protect Indian interests even if he has to concede some space for China. This would require minimising Tamil Nada’s influence in shaping Sri Lanka policy and coming to some amicable arrangement on the Tamil Nadu fishermen’s problem. This may well be on the cards if we go by the recent political indications given by the BJP.

So we can expect the triangular relationship between India, China and Sri Lanka to remain an uneasy one till its angular contours are smoothed with patience and understanding.

[Col R Hariharan is a retired MI officer associated with the Chennai Centre for China Studies and the South Asia Analysis Group. He served in Sri Lanka as the Head of Intelligence of the Indian Peacekeeping Force (1987 to 90). E-mail: haridirect@gmail.com Blog: http://col.hariharan.info]

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Islamic State Steps Back From Three Syrian Villages

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By Julie Bogoslovsky

Jihadists from the Islamic State (IS) have withdrawn from three villages in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province following clashes with a Sunni tribe, reported a Syrian NGO yesterday.

According to the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights (SOHR), the Islamic State fighters were pushed out of Abou Hamam, Kashkiyeh and Ghranij, three villages dominated by the Shaitat Sunni tribe in this oil-rich province. The fighting began on Wednesday; with locals opposing IS proclaiming on Twitter that “Shaitat is rising against the Islamic State”. The confrontations erupted after the IS detained three members of the tribe, “violating an agreement” between the two sides.

The Shaitat fighters had earlier promised the Islamic State that it would not oppose the group in exchange for the jihadists not harassing or attacking its members.

On Thursday, Islamic State fighters raided these villages, searching houses and kidnapping or capturing an unknown number of people, stated SOHR, adding that fighting was raging in the Shaitat villages.

A twitter account controlled by the Islamic State in Deir Ezzor posted a photo showing nine people with their heads down and hands tied behind their backs with the caption reading that they were captives from Shaitat who had committed “treachery”.

At least nine Islamic State fighters were killed in the clashes while the jihadist group was trying to request ally forces from across the border in Iraq to send reinforcements.

According to SOHR, following their victory, members of the tribe set fire to buildings held by the Islamic State in a fourth village.

The activist, Ward al-Furati, stated that clashes were still ongoing in Deir Ezzor’s towns of al-Bukamal, al-Tayyana and al-Mayadeen.

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Saudi Arabian Man Dies Of Ebola

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By MD Al-Sulami

A patient suspected to have developed symptoms of the Ebola virus fever died in a Jeddah hospital on Wednesday morning, announced the Ministry of Health.

“Ibrahim Al-Zahrani, who was in extremely critical condition since his admission to hospital late Monday, died following unsuccessful attempts to revive him after he went into cardiac arrest,” a medical source said.

The patient, in his 40s, had been placed in quarantine at a specialized hospital after developing these symptoms upon his return from a business trip to Sierra Leone, where hundreds of people have reportedly fallen victim to the disease.

The hospital has taken measures to bury the patient in accordance with Islamic rituals while strictly adhering to international standards for handling contagious diseases, the ministry’s statement said.

A public health team at the ministry is striving to track down anyone who had come into contact with the patient for medical observation, the statement said.

Investigation is still under way to identify the precise disease the patient was suffering from after he had tested negative for dengue fever and other types of hemorrhagic fevers.

The ministry has also sent samples of the victim’s blood to several advanced laboratories in Germany and the United States to identify the disease in collaboration with the WHO. The Kingdom has stopped issuing Umrah visas to pilgrims from Ebola-hit countries.

The UN agency, meanwhile, has launched a $100 million appeal. “We need many more contributions from the international community, including governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and academic institutions or from anyone who can provide us with doctors, nurses and other public health staff,” Hartl said.

Ebola is a severe and often fatal disease that affects and kills up to 90 percent of humans infected with the virus. The Ebola virus is passed to humans through close contact with animals, such as fruit bats, monkeys, gorillas and chimpanzees carrying the virus.

Infected patients are highly contagious and pass the virus onto others who come in close contact with them, either by exposure to objects that have been contaminated with infected blood or bodily fluids or through direct contact with contaminated fluids.

The incubation period for Ebola viral hemorrhagic fever is typically one week, during which time patients will suffer from an array of symptoms, such as fever, chills, back pain, vomiting and diarrhea. As the virus progresses, infected patients will experience a rash over their entire body, swelling of the eyes and genital area and bleeding from the mouth, nose, eyes, ears, and rectum, followed by shock, coma and death in many cases.

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Gaza And The Balfour Declaration – OpEd

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By Neil Berry

It seems a strange fatality that the latest horrors perpetrated by Israel in Gaza have coincided with the commemoration in the UK of the beginning of the First World War on Aug. 4, 1914. For the unresolved Israel-Palestine conflict is the poison fruit of what was hailed as the ‘war to end all wars.’

It is understandable that the centenary of the 1914-18 war matters profoundly to British people mindful of forebears who lost their lives in this hellish episode of blood-letting. Yet the preoccupation with mourning the war dead is apt to cloud understanding.

If there is no little public confusion about what precisely the war was fought for, there is also widespread ignorance about its legacy, especially with regard to the Middle East.

Few grasp that the Israel-Palestine conflict has its roots in the anxiety of the British imperial government to secure the backing of world Jewry, above all that of prominent American Jews, in their war against Germany.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which the British Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour promised that his government would ‘view with favor’ the establishment of a ‘Jewish national home’ in Palestine, was issued at a time when Britain faced bankruptcy, with the outcome of its war effort in doubt. Jewish support was reckoned a potentially decisive asset in the struggle to defeat the forces of Kaiser William II.

Much is said about the need never to forget the lessons of the war. Yet lessons can only been learned if they are taught, and for all that it constituted a great global crisis the war has long been portrayed in blinkered Euro-centric terms. The question of its wider fall-out, of what Britain and its ally France did with their ‘victory’ over Germany, is seldom confronted. It is far from common knowledge that that they resorted among other things to flagrant land-grabbing in the Middle East, re-drawing the map of the region according to imperial whim.

Not that this was how the British imperial elite saw their behavior. In assuming jurisdiction over Palestine, Britain preened itself that it was selflessly administering the area as a ‘mandate,’ a trust to be surrendered in the fulness of time. In so far as they were sincere champions of the Zionist cause, British rulers saw themselves as chivalrous benefactors of a long-persecuted people, one whose religion had profoundly influenced their own Christian faith, implanting in Christian culture a sense of the numinous significance of Jerusalem not unlike that nursed by Jews themselves.

What seems barely credible today is that both before and after the creation of Israel in 1947 Zionism enjoyed the status of a ‘progressive’ cause in Britain.

It was considered such even after Jewish terrorists forced the British to leave Palestine at gun-point. Among the bien pensant, the Nazi attempt to eliminate European Jewry, together with the apparent vibrancy of Socialism in Israel, encouraged the belief that the return of Jews to Palestine represented the triumph of good over evil. Scant regard was paid to the cost of this to indigenous Palestinians. Liberal opinion partook of the same colonialist mindset as the Conservative Balfour, for whom Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular did not belong to civilization.

Now, not least among liberal-minded Western Jews, there is deepening disquiet about Zionism’s relationship with fundamental human decencies. In the light of Israel’s savage onslaught on Gaza, the Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland has felt obliged to question whether it is morally defensible to be a liberal and a Zionist. Palestinian victims of Zionism may wonder how people of conscience ever imagined the two things were compatible.

The truth is that Zionists and their British political supporters were long united in their contempt for the Palestinian people, their disinclination to regard them as fellow human beings.

When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to speak to Palestinians he is reproducing the towering racist disdain of Arthur J. Balfour, who, with reference to Britain’s Mandate in Palestine, declared that he was not disposed so much as ‘to go through the motions of consulting the present inhabitants of the country.’ Even Balfour, though, might be aghast at all that has flowed from his supercilious words.

Email: en.bee@hotmail.co.uk

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The Fragile Future Of Democracy In Afghanistan – Analysis

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By Matthew Porges

Afghanistan’s ongoing presidential election, if successful, will mark the first transfer of power via an election in that country’s history. Election does not necessarily imply democracy. Afghanistan’s previous two presidential elections, both won by incumbent Hamid Karzai, saw ubiquitous election fraud and there are legitimate questions about how representative one leader or political party can be in a country so fraught with sectarian and tribal divisions. Nowhere are these divisions more apparent than in the central challenge of selling the whole process of democracy to the Afghan people.

Afghanistan’s divisions are manifested partly in the readiness of many Afghans to pursue other avenues when the State looks less than functional, which is its usual condition. Presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah who withdrew from the 2009 election to protest Karzai’s election fraud has threatened to create a “parallel state,” by force if necessary, if the currently disputed outcome cannot be resolved. This willingness on Abdullah’s part is suggestive of many things, most important of which may be a lack of confidence that the central government can effectively represent more than one of Afghanistan’s many groups at a time. Abdullah nominally represents Tajik interests—the northern part of the country—despite his own mixed ancestry.

Ashraf Ghani, the other candidate, has more widespread support among Pashtuns. The challenge all parties face is in trying to make this election more than a contest to see which ethnic group has more voters.

There are a lot of ways to slice Afghanistan: along tribal lines, religious lines, political allegiances, ethnicity, or even language. Western powers, however, have chosen none of these divisions. Afghanistan is to be ruled as a single state, headquartered in Kabul, and is to be a democracy. The 2004 constitution under which Karzai has vaguely been operating grants considerable powers of centralisation: for instance, the president appoints not only regional governors, but also the police chiefs.

In a country like Afghanistan, where adjacent regions may be radically different, this is understandably concerning to anyone not belonging to the current president’s particular ethnic group. In part, this will be mitigated by various power-sharing measures, such as reinstating the position of a Prime Minister, as well as proposed elections for regional governors. While this is a step in the right direction, it is not without its own dangers. Democracy can take many different forms, and centralised government is not the only way to rule Afghanistan. Working with instead of against Afghanistan’s existing tribal structures remains an open challenge for both the West and any future government in Kabul.

The larger question, perhaps even bigger than identifying the least dysfunctional sort of governance, is whether or not Afghanistan has improved since the US-led invasion. Certainly the problems facing Afghanistan today are not the same problems that faced the country in 2001; they are, perhaps, new twists in old problems. The Taliban government is gone, but the Taliban itself is not, and it remains a political force by virtue of its long reach and extraordinary brutality. Different ethnic groups can now sit around negotiating tables and debate representation—but ethnic divisions remain the primary backdrop against which all political manoeuvring is conducted. Afghanistan is certainly better in some ways, but it is unclear whether that change is durable, or whether a post-NATO Afghanistan can protect the improvements that have been made.

In that context, is Western involvement in the form a Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) in the interest of most Afghans? Karzai, who has said he will not sign the agreement—citing heavy civilian casualties and the US’ meddling in the allegedly democratic process it created—disagrees. The arguments in favour of continued Western involvement are well-known—ongoing insurgency, fragile central governance, weak institutions, al-Qaeda—but good counterinsurgency has to be more than the temporary solutions of concentrated firepower, strung together until they become permanent. If Afghanistan is to be a democracy, it must be permitted to make its own choices, right or wrong. Both Ghani and Abdullah have stated that they intend to sign the BSA if elected.

Tactical operations are easy to evaluate but strategic goals are often opaque for long periods of time. Expecting Afghanistan to be a functioning democracy right now is probably unrealistic. The things that are realistic are all short-term, and fairly precise: hold a (reasonably) legitimate election, transfer power peacefully, draw-down Western troops from the country, and sign a BSA.

The real danger here is alienation – a sense that Afghanistan is somehow impervious to improvement or positive change. That is untrue, but that perception among external actors will only be reinforced by a lengthy and fraudulent election process. What is at stake is not so much Afghanistan’s present as its future. At some point, there needs to be some tangible progress, something to demonstrate that Afghanistan can, in fact, exist as a single country under democratic leadership. Perfection is not required, but if there aren’t glimpses of something better than perpetual civil war, entrenched corruption, and a total lack of trust in the process, the notion of Afghanistan itself is going to be a hard sell—both internationally, and to the Afghan people.

Matthew Porges
Research Intern, IPCS

The post The Fragile Future Of Democracy In Afghanistan – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Maldives: Uniting In The Name Of Islam And Palestine – Analysis

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By N Sathiya Moorthy

In what’s reportedly among the largest rallies in capital Male, people cutting across party lines protested recently against the current Israeli attacks on Palestine. Local media reports, quoting the organizers, put the number at 13,000, many of them youth.

The last time such a massive rally took place in Male, it was on 23 December 2011. Religious NGOs with the backing of political parties opposed to then ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) of President Mohammed Nasheed protested against his government in the name of Islam. Acquiring the sobriquet ‘December 23 movement’, they wanted President Nasheed out.

Events and politico-administrative bungling that followed led up to the protests of 7 February 2012, when Nasheed quit under controversial circumstances. As per the constitutional provisions, Vice-President Mohammed Waheed took over. The rest, including the democratic election of current President Abdulla Yameen, is all part of contemporary Maldivian history.

Modern, moderate, yet…

Islam is the State religion of Maldives, and the Constitution bars non-Muslims from acquiring citizenship. The pro-democracy reform protests of the last decade and the consequent re-writing of the Constitution left this aspect untouched. So did the pro-democracy sections of the polity and also social NGOs. They did not even want to consider/reconsider the issue, respecting the larger sentiments of the nation’s 350,000-strong population.

For an exclusive Sunni-Islamic nation, Maldives has always remained moderately religious. Islamic tenets have mostly been confined to homes. Where religion bans habits like drinking and smoking, both the society and the law have abided by it. Where personal and penal laws are concerned, following the Shariat having become a custom and habit over the centuries, people follow much of it willingly.

There are grey areas like rights of women, where flogging for adulterous women attracted condemnation from then visiting UNHRC chair, Navi Pillay. It led to protests in Maldives, against Navi Pillay, who has been controversial herself. Known to be hard-selling ever-changing western concepts of human rights reforms, tuned to their social geo-political needs of the time, Pillay, for instance, has been known to be insensitive to local customs and traditions.

Those traditions are steeped in antiquity, often predating the history of the West and western civilization. Hence, they require time and non-interfering local efforts, to change. And for this reason, to name any nation or people as ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘radical’ could be wrong ab initio. Maldives’ is no exception.

In the case of Maldives, geography also has a say in penal provisions. ‘House detention’ and ‘island detention’ that had meaning in the past, when access to individual islands in the Indian Ocean archipelago were few and far between, if at all, continue to be on the penal statute to date. This may have more to do with the political masters’ inherent hesitation to making sweeping overnight changes to all laws without preparing the society for the same.

Maldives used to be as modern as it was moderate. It continues to be so. Women have had near-equal rights and access to education and it continues to date. However, in terms of dress, there is an increasing tendency among young girls and women to stick to the long-flowing Islamic dress. There are more men now than in the past, growing a flowing beard – again identified with religion.

There has been nothing to suggest that Maldives as a country, or Maldivians as a community have taken to ‘fundamentalist Islam’ in any big way. A coinage of the West the term remains unclear and undefined, as much in Maldives as elsewhere. If anything, democracy-linked political protests of the past years and election rallies have all attracted a substantial number of women, most of them in their head scarves and other forms of head/face cover.

Men with flowing beards were/are also a common sight in such protests, even of political parties that are dubbed ‘less Islamic’ than the rest, by their political rivals. If anything, the MDP as the single largest party in the country is also believed to be having the highest number of youth of both genders. If one were to go by international media perceptions, many, if not most, youth in the country are radicals. They are not – at least in as many numbers.

Political Islam, politicising Islam

It’s not the first time that religion has lent support – or, has been used – to support political causes. In Maldives, the political protests against erstwhile President Maumoon Gayoom’s 30-year-rule had commenced with religion-driven protests of the kind. As far back as the Thirties, protest-leaders called in the name of Islam, for changing the Sultanate into a Republic.

The use of religion for political purposes should not thus be confused with a return or advent of ‘fundamentalist Islam’ or whatever. Suffice to point out that for neutralising the use of religion against his leadership, President Gayoom had also resorted to a counter-tactic. His religious education in Al Azhar University in Cairo was used against him. It also suited him not to contest.

During the past years of pro-democracy protests, the world got to know only about the latter, painting President Gayoom as a ‘religious fundamentalist’ of sorts, who was also against the West and the rest because of the same reason. Religion-centric Adhalaath Party (AP) was a product of that process, but has stayed on to lent badly-required religious legitimacy and credibility to political parties across-the-board that were otherwise modern in comparative and relative terms of ideology and concepts. They could all do with the AP’s small but committed vote-share, and have courted the party by turns through the years of pro-democracy protests and beyond.

Health, education for all

President Gayoom was/is the harbinger of modern Maldives, where health and education for all became the goal. The money came from global tourism, which was however confined to isolated island-resorts, in due regard of religious sentiments that prohibited consumption of liquor. He took off from where his equally-controversial predecessor Ibrahim Nasir had left.

Modernisation of education meant that there would be fewer opportunities for madrasa-style religious learning. If anything, school education was modeled on the Cambridge scheme, aimed at the employability of new-generation Maldivian youth, men and women.

Today if there is still a shortfall in reaching health and/or education to the people still, it owes to fiscal, political and administrative reasons. There is nothing or religion religious about it. If anything, popular governmental schemes like the innovative Aasandha health insurance scheme launched by the Nasheed presidency and large-scale economic reforms all derive from western concepts of political administration and ‘market capitalism’.

The inherent contradictions between the capitalist economic model and the subsidy-driven social schemes like Aasandha show nonetheless. It is inevitable too in a society under transition. It is also true that by labeling such schemes under different names and heads, and packaging and marketing them differently, ‘capitalist’ western governments too have sustained and substantiated subsidies, for instance.

Better still, there is across-the-board consensus among political parties in Maldives on economic reforms. There are differences and distinctions only in the details. Modern as its inception goes, the MDP does make its preference for market capitalism known, while in power or out of it. The ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) of President Yameen, headed by half-brother President Gayoom, too is through a transitional process – from the latter’s days of ‘command economy’ to the former’s acceptance of ‘economic reforms’, privatization and globalisation – but not as rapidly as the Nasheed regime.

The nation’s third largest Jumhooree Party (JP), headed by Gasim Ibrahim, one of the richest men in Maldives, has made no bones about its backing for a modern economic administration. It’s only on details, preferences and priorities within a broadly and widely-accepted scheme that they differ. That is also what successful models of multi-party democracies are all about, elsewhere, too.

Symbolic, but…

Now in the Opposition, MDP’s President Nasheed fired the first salvo this time, calling for Maldivians to send the armed forces to fight alongside the Palestinians. At a public rally, he also recalled Maldives sending its troops to Sri Lanka in the Forties, as if to justify his current call.

‘Symbolic’ as the call may have been, given the small size of the Maldivian forces and of the potency or otherwise of the war-weaponry at their command, President Nasheed’s call could cut both ways. On the one hand, his party has not stopped blaming political opponents for alleged use, misuse and abuse of the nation’s uniformed forces for political purposes – at times, in the name of religion.

Though President Nasheed’s call did not go too far, its potent for ferreting out trouble for Maldives in the international community is strewn with possibilities. The call came not long after local media reports reported that at least two Maldivians, both middle-aged dn one of them a suicide-bomber, had died fighting on the side of anti-government protestors in Syria.

Reports have also claimed that another 20-odd Maldivians were fighting in Syria. Maldivians have also been caught fighting along the Af-Pak border against the US-led NATO forces. There have also been reports of a Maldivian hand in the 26/11 ‘Mumbai serial blasts’ in neighbouring India, and in the more recent discovery of a plot to bomb the US and Israeli consulates in southern Bengaluru city.

Upping the ante on Palestine

Maldives is now busy acquiring all characteristics of a ‘modern democracy’ (?), where political parties are out to electorally capitalise on the fractures that are inherent and natural to any society with a long history. Be it the Indian neighbor, the world’s largest democracy, or the US, the world’s most powerful, if not the ‘greatest’ of democracies, religion has not escaped the politician’s attention, elsewhere, too.

In the US for instance, the Republican GoP is identified as a religiously-conservative party, more conservative than most conservative parties in the ‘under-developed’ Third World. Judges of the Supreme Court in the US, again, are branded for their ‘religion-inspired’ conservatism in matters that are before the court.

Included in the long list is the American woman’s right to ‘abortion’. The debate derives from, and is centred on religion. The fundamental rights and the UN-enshrined human rights of the woman invariably take a back seat, both in the US and elsewhere in the modern, western world.

The West, starting with the media, needs to be equally sensible and sensitive in ‘stereo-typing’ or ‘branding’ nations and communities as fundamentalist and/or radicals in a religious sense of the term – and consider them all either as terrorists or prospective terrorists. Such ‘branding’ has made individuals and communities look increasingly inward, which fundamentalists seek to exploit, nonetheless.

Individuals do not make a religion, and there are as many jihadists who have travelled to war-torn areas in the Islamic world from the West as from fellow-Muslim and other non-Muslim nations. More than personal conviction, the ‘stereo-typing’ of the kind may have been behind members of the Muslim community, collectively or otherwise, going on the defensive and looking at religious orthodoxy as an option. This too is different from fundamentalism and/or radicalism, and is much different from jihad or terrorism, or both.

Maldives is no different. Even while entering into competitive, religion-driven political game on the Palestine issue, initiated by the political rival near-exclusively with the domestic constituency in mind, President Yameen and his government lost no time in condemning and cautioning fellow-Maldivians in seeking to fight other people’s wars in other nations.

In early reactions to Maldivians dying in the Syrian war, President Yameen clarified that the Government cannot back claims on behalf of the dead. The Government however offered to do its best to get other Maldivians in the battle-area back home, if they so desired.

Both the Government and the private media also published a series of interviews with religious scholars, clarifying for Maldivians on what constituted jihad in the religious sense of the term. They also underscored the point that fighting other people’s civil wars in other countries did not most definitely constitute jihad.

Foreign Minister Dunya Maumoon has since announced a ‘symbolic’ boycott of Israeli products and annulment of three bilateral agreements – in the field of health, culture and education, and tourism. Though there does not seem to be much politics behind it, all three agreements were signed in 2009, when MDP’s President Nasheed was in office. Minister Dunya also announced that Maldives would co-sponsor a UN resolution against Israeli attacks on Gaza and Palestinians.

The ‘politics of Palestine’ in Maldives took a minor domestic diversion when MDP cadres protested outside the house of a local minister in Male. Home Minister Umar Nasir was quoted as ordering the Maldivian Police Service (MPS) to identify the protestors and arrest them. The official reason, which was otherwise justified, too, was that the Public Assembly Act, passed after President Nasheed’s replacement triggered a nation-wide violent protest, banned protests outside private residences, leave alone protests without prior police sanction.

In the background of the pro-democracy protests that the predecessor Gayoom regime had reportedly put down firmly, the 2008 Constitution provided for no-holds-barred right to protest and hold public rallies. The new law provided for what could otherwise be termed ‘reasonable restrictions’ to those rights. Neither the original freedom, nor the later-day law had anything religious about them. They flowed from domestic political conditions and politico-administrative reasons and constraints.

(The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter)

The post Maldives: Uniting In The Name Of Islam And Palestine – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.


Moscow Considers Forcing European Airlines To Fly Around Russia

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(EurActiv) — Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev threatened on Tuesday (5 August) to retaliate for the grounding of a subsidiary of national airline Aeroflot because of EU sanctions, with one newspaper reporting that European flights to Asia over Siberia could be banned.

Low-cost carrier Dobrolyot, operated by Aeroflot, suspended all flights last week after its airline leasing agreement was cancelled under European Union sanctions because it flies to Crimea, a region Russia annexed from Ukraine in March.

“We should discuss possible retaliation,” Medvedev said at a meeting with the Russian transport minister and a deputy chief executive of Aeroflot.

The business daily Vedomosti reported that Russia may restrict or ban European airlines from flying over Siberia on Asian routes, a move that would impose costs on European carriers by making flights take longer and require more fuel.

Vedomosti quoted unnamed sources as saying the foreign and transport ministries were discussing the action, which would put European carriers at a disadvantage to Asian rivals but would also cost Russia money it collects in overflight fees.

Shares in Aeroflot – which according to Vedomosti gets around $300 million a year in fees paid by foreign airlines flying over Siberia – tumbled after the report, closing down 5.9% compared with a 1.4% drop on the broad index.

Siberia ban would force EU carriers into costly detours

At the height of the Cold War, most Western airlines were barred from flying through Russian airspace to Asian cities, and instead had to operate via the Gulf or the US airport of Anchorage, Alaska on the polar route.

European carriers now fly over Siberia on their rapidly growing routes to countries such as China, Japan and South Korea, paying the fees which have been subject to a long dispute between Brussels and Moscow.

Vedomosti quoted one source as saying a ban could cost airlines like Lufthansa, British Airways and Air France €1 billion over three months, but industry experts said that figure was probably too high.

Avoiding Russian airspace would probably be 25-50% more expensive than paying fees for transit, said Russian aviation consultant Boris Ryabok, estimating European airlines would lose around $100-200 million per year, less than the cost to Russia of the lost fees.

Lufthansa said it operates about 180 flights a week through Siberian airspace but declined further comment, as did British Airways.

The EU has widened its sanctions after last month’s downing of a Malaysian airliner over territory in eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Moscow rebels, with the loss of 298 lives.

Miserable summer for EU-Russia tourism

The suspension of the airline flying to Crimea prevented Russians from taking cheap holidays on the Black Sea peninsula at resorts such as Yalta. This has added to a miserable summer during which a series of Russian travel companies have gone under as the economy flirts with recession and the rouble falls.

Itar-Tass reported on Tuesday that the IntAer travel operator had become the latest to fold, stranding about 500 holidaymakers abroad. The company blamed “a sharp fall in demand and purchasing power and the rise in the exchange rates of foreign currencies and the negative political situation”.

Russians have been increasingly taking holidays in countries such as Greece, Croatia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Egypt. However, the rouble has fallen 9% this year against the dollar due to the slowing economy and the effects of the crisis in relations with the West, forcing up the cost of foreign trips.

Around 15,000 tourists are stuck abroad following the collapse of the larger Labirint holiday firm, although industry officials have promised customers will be compensated from insurance policies which the companies had to take out.

A Greek tourism official said the country expected 1.1 million Russian tourists this year, down from 1.35 million in 2013. Arrivals from Ukraine, where government forces are battling the rebels in the east, are down 50%.

Andreas Andreadis, who heads the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises, expected this would cost the country €300 million. Greece still aimed to boost numbers of Russian visitors to 2.5 million a year by 2021, he said, but added “Things look like they will be getting worse before they get better.”

Sanctions ground billionaire’s private jet

While the mass travel market suffers, sanctions imposed by the United States have targeted individuals close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Billionaire Gennady Timchenko said US company Gulfstream had stopped servicing his private plane. “Gulfstream has ceased to fulfil its contractual obligations, grounding my jet which had been purchased from it for a lot of money,” he told ITAR-TASS news agency in an interview.

Gulfstream had been banned from any contact with Timchenko, he said, and could no longer supply spare parts. Pilots had also been banned from using the jet’s navigation system.

However, Timchenko said Russia’s business elite would not put pressure on Putin to change tack on Ukraine due to the sanctions which would only strengthen support for his policies.

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The ‘New And Brutal Israel’? – OpEd

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By Jeremy Salt

Israel’s shocking war on Gaza has done more than any of its previous onslaughts to shake loose the stranglehold its lobbyists have exerted over the mainstream media. Criticism that would never have been countenanced before is now seeing the light of day. For those who watch its atrocious behavior, the Zionist settler state has gone too far since the day it was born but now it has gone too far even for those whose interest in the Middle East is peripheral. The killing of Palestinians day after day, the deliberate targeting of children, the obliteration of entire families, the joyous reaction of Israelis watching the missiles fall and the hatred coursing through the veins of Israeli society bear witness to a sick state born of a sick ideology.

By continuing its barbaric onslaught Israel is telling the world that it does not care what the world thinks. But then it never has cared. It lives in a world of its own, bound by rules which the rest of the world regards not as rules of any kind but violations of law and morality. Its so-called ‘defense forces’ have always killed infinitely more civilians than they have ever killed soldiers. All its wars have been wars of aggression and opportunity and the present onslaught on Gaza is no exception. Netanyahu wanted to destroy the Hamas-Fatah unity government and the kidnapping and murder of three settler youths (following the murder of two Palestinian youths by an Israeli sniper) was the pretext he used. Even the Israeli police have admitted that Hamas had nothing to do with the killing of the three settlers. In the meantime nearly 2000 Palestinians have been killed in what is not in any sense a war but a cowardly assault on one of the most vulnerable people in the world by one of the most advanced militaries in the world.

Mike Carlton, a columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote that this is a ‘new and brutal Israel’ but he was wrong. This was the same old Israel doing what it has done over the past seven decades. Had the mainstream media ever had the courage to report the Palestinian-Israeli conflict accurately readers would have been prepared for the horrors they have been seeing for the past three weeks. There is absolutely nothing new in the current onslaught. Israel has massacred children before, bombed schools before, bombed hospitals and ambulances before, and wiped out entire families before. It has brought down entire apartment buildings on the heads of their sleeping residents before. All of this its propagandists justify by Israel’s need to ‘defend’ itself.

The column by Mike Carlton was headed ‘Israel’s rank and rotten fruit is being called fascism’. He quoted the Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert on the shocking scenes he had witnessed in Gaza. Carlton’s conclusions were striking only in the context of a media which habitually refuses to call a spade a spade when it comes to Israel. Carlton called it for what it is. Israel was waging a war of terror on Gaza: ‘call it genocide, call it ethnic cleansing the aim is to kill Arabs’. Well, more precisely, Palestinians as by their very presence on the land they have been the core enemy from the beginning.

The more extreme of the extreme amongst the Zionists say out loud that the Palestinians have to be wiped out or at the very least driven into Sinai. Moshe Feiglin, the deputy of what the Zionist occupiers of Palestine call the ‘Knesset’, called for full military conquest of the Gaza strip and the expulsion of its inhabitants. They would be held in tent encampments along the Sinai border while their final destination was decided. Those who continued to resist would be ‘exterminated’. In the Times of Israel Yochanan Gordon poses the question of when (not if) genocide is permissible, coming out in favor of obliteration when that enemy is the Palestinian people. Ayelet Shaked writes on Facebook that all Palestinians are the enemy and must be wiped out: ‘Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants and their blood should be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons. Nothing would be more just. They should go as should the physical houses in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise more little snakes are raised’. Again, there is nothing new in any of this hatred. Snakes, cockroaches in bottles and tumors are among the epithets that racist rabbis, generals and politicians were hurling at the Palestinians well before Ms Ayelet came along to add her poison to the brew.

Ms Ayelet’s Jewish Home Party wants Jewish law to prevail all over occupied Palestine. Her savagery and her party are the Jewish dopfelgangers of the genocidal fanatics now devastating Iraq and Syria in the name of the Islamic State. The day after this psychopathic woman posted her Facebook entry three young men with a similar mindset picked up one of the ‘snakes’, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, a boy of 16 and poured petrol down his throat before setting fire to him, a crime driven by naked racist hatred.

Mike Carlton referred to the ‘breathtaking irony’ that the atrocities in Gaza ‘can be committed by a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and history who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the center of the race [sic.] memory.’ But it is Jews as Jews who have a ‘proud liberal tradition of scholarship’ and not Jews as Zionists; it is not Jews as Jews who are committing these terrible crimes against the Palestinians of Gaza but Jews as Zionists; Jews like Ariel Sharon and the demented Menahim Begin; Jews like the rabbis who use the same racist and genocidal language as Ayelet Shaked; Jews like other members of the Knesset who share her views; and Jews like the three young men who turned Muhammad Abu Khdeir into a human bomb. In Israel and around the world, however, it is Jews as Jews who are increasingly appalled by what they are seeing and cutting themselves off from this state and its ideology.

Mike Carlton’s article was accompanied by a cartoon showing a Jewish man sitting in a garden chair emblazoned with the Star of David and pointing what appeared to be a remote control at the destruction of Gaza as if it were all happening on television. The man is wearing a skullcap and has been given a large nose. Apparently the cartoonist, Glen de Lievre, often gives his cartoon characters large noses: an even better known Australian cartoonist, Michael Leunig, does the same thing but the nose enabled Zionist lobbyists to raise the familiar accusations of anti-semitism. The murder of hundreds of children, the slaughter of entire extended families, the murder of boys on the beach by the gunner on an Israeli warship and bombing of hospitals, ambulances, schools and apartment blocks did not raise a quiver of outrage in their statements. All that outraged the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) and the Bnai Brith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) was the nose.

Emily Gian, the Zionist Federation of Australia’s ‘director of media advocacy’, called the cartoon a ‘blood libel’. For two weeks Israel had been been raining death and destruction on the heads of completely defenseless men, women and children but for Emily Gian, Israel was not engaged in mass slaughter but ‘fighting on the battlefield and working assiduously to save the lives of its own and minimize damage to the others.’ As for sympathy, compassion and horror, the barbaric scenes coming out of Gaza were no more than a ‘public relations’ tool for Hamas.

The editor-in-chief of the Sydney Morning Herald, Darren Goodsir, began by defending his columnist and cartoonist but under pressure from the lobby and powerful political figures associated with it, including Malcolm Turnbull, the Minister for Communications, he soon caved in. The cartoon was the main problem: ‘we apologise: publishing the cartoon in its original form was wrong’. Apparently this would have meant removing anything that would have identified the man as Jewish, not just the enlarged nose but the kippah (skullcap) on his head and the Star of David on the back of his chair. In other words, removing all the elements in the cartoon that linked the attack on Gaza to Israel. The Herald initially felt that no racial vilification had occurred but now appreciated ‘that in using the Star of David and the kippah in the cartoon the newspaper inserted an inappropriate element of religion rather than nationhood and made serious error of judgment.’

As they did during the last (2008-9) onslaught on Gaza, the residents of towns on the other side of the fence cheered, clapped and danced on the hilltops as the missiles fell. They sat outside Sderot (built on stolen Palestinian land) enjoying the spectacle of the people they had displaced being obliterated in their homes. The photo of one person in particular gave Glen de Lievre the idea for his cartoon, which accurately depicted the mood of a large section of Israeli society. The Star of David is no longer just a symbol of a religion. It is the symbol of the state: it is emblazoned on the wings of the aircraft showering missiles on Gaza and on the fluttering pennants of Israeli tanks bombarding apartment houses and schools. What other symbol of the state would the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald have had his cartoonist use?

The Herald finished up apologizing for any distress caused to those outraged by the shape of a nose and not the slaughter of close to 2000 people by the Israeli military. Bluster designed to shift attention from the main event comes from the Zionist lobby every time Israel commits a new atrocity and it worked again. The curious part is why Mr. Goodsir responded as he did. He might have told his callers they needed to get their priorities straight. He might have told them to bugger off as an exasperated editor might eventually tell any crank caller who refuses to shut up. But he apologized for the offence of drawing attention in a cartoon to Israeli savagery rather than face up to being called an anti-semite. This was the fate of Mr Carlton – as he expected – and would have been the fate of Mr Goodsir had he not grovelled. The tail end to this story is that Mr Carlton resigned on being told he was being suspended for using ‘inappropriate language’ when responding to hate mail from Jewish readers. They called him Nazi scum and a Jew-hating racist and he told them to fuck off. This is inappropriate?

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Bnai Brith Anti-Defamation Commission purport to speak for Jews when ‘defending’ Israel. Undoubtedly they do speak for some Jews: Jews incapable of seeing Palestinians as equal human beings; Jews dancing with delight as the missiles and tank shells are poured down on the heads of the men, women and children of Gaza; Jews unmoved by the horrifying scenes coming out of Gaza; Jews who blame anyone but Israel for the atrocities this state has never stopped committing since the day of its birth; Jews who fill the social media with their hatred of Arabs; Jews who want Gaza retaken and the Palestinians driven into Sinai; Jews who support this latest barbaric attempt to drive Gaza back to the stone age. The ECAJ and the ADC have been hiding their Zionism behind Judaism for decades. They are not defending ‘Jewish values’ when they defend Israel. They are defending Zionism and the behavior of a state that lives in standing violation of ethics, law and morality.

In Australia and around the world Jews are turning their backs on a racist settler state which dares to speak in their name. But there is no point in wasting any more words on Israel and its shrill apologists: after nearly seven decades of seeing what we are seeing yet again, they have to be written off as being beyond redemption. Let them proceed on the path they have chosen until it reaches its bitter end.

- Jeremy Salt is an associate professor of Middle Eastern history and politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

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Expensive Drugs And Medicaid – OpEd

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The media have been full of hand-wringing pieces in recent weeks over Sovaldi, the new Hepatitis C drug. The issue is that Sovaldi is apparently an effective treatment for this debilitating and possibly deadly disease. However Gilead Sciences, the patent holder on Sovaldi, is charging $84,000 for a 3-month course of treatment.

There are 3 million people with Hepatitis C in the United States. This puts the tab at over $250 billion if everyone with the disease got treatment. That would be a major cost to private insurers and public sector programs like Medicaid. This is the basis for hand wringing. Should we require private insurers to pick up the tab for Sovaldi for people with Hepatitis C? Does it have to be everyone or maybe just the very sick? And should already stretched state Medicaid programs have to bear this additional burden?

The answers are much easier for anyone who doesn’t mind bucking the drug companies. Sovaldi is expensive in the United States because we give Gilead Sciences a patent monopoly on the drug. It uses this monopoly to charge a price that is far above the free market price. We know the free market price because a generic version is already available in Egypt for $900 per treatment. Indian generic manufacturers believe that they can produce the drug for less than $200.

This presents a simple and obvious way around the $84,000 question: send people to Egypt or India for a treatment that costs less than one percent as much. We could pay for family members to go as well, and stay a full 3-months, and still come out tens of thousands of dollars ahead. Certainly this can be presented as an option to people, perhaps throwing in a $5,000 or $10,000 incentive to make the trip worth their while.

This should be a simple way for states to save vast amounts of money. They will all have large numbers of people suffering from Hepatitis C, many of whom are covered by the state’s Medicaid program. For example, with a bit less than 12 percent of the country’s population, California would have around 350,000 people with Hepatitis. If one-third are on Medicaid, and the total cost for treating someone in another country is $20,000, the state could save more than $7 billion by offering the option to be treated outside of the United States. For Texas the potential savings by this calculation would be around $4.8 billion, and for New Jersey the savings would be around $1.7 billion.

These huge potential savings should present a great opportunity for governors like Jerry Brown, Rick Perry, or Chris Christie to show themselves as tough guys who are willing to do what it takes to save taxpayers’ money. That is, unless they are scared to stand up to the drug industry.

The industry types will of course yell and scream that they won’t be able to finance their research if people could just evade their patent monopolies by going to countries where generics are available. This is true, but it just points to absurdity of using a 16th century mechanism to finance 21st century research. If we didn’t rely on patent monopolies to finance drug research we wouldn’t face difficult questions about paying tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars for drugs that are essential for people’s health or life.

If we just paid for the research upfront, with few exceptions, drugs would be cheap. We wouldn’t have to worry about whether the government or private insurers could pay the vast sums demanded by drug companies with legal monopolies on the sale of a drug.

We do have experience with the government financing research. The bulk of U.S. military research is financed by the government. While there are many tales of inefficiency and corruption, the defense industry does produce highly sophisticated weaponry. There also is a huge advantage of public financing of drug research rather than weapons research; there is no reason for secrecy. Full and prompt disclosure of research findings would be a condition of funding.

There is also a precedent. We spend $30 billion a year on research conducted by the National Institutes of Health, funding that has strong support across the political spectrum. However this is mostly for basic research. It would be necessary to double to triple the level of funding with the explicit expectation that the money would be used for the development and testing of new drugs.

We care about these drugs because peoples’ lives and health are involved, but there is also a huge amount of money at stake. We spent more than $380 billion last year on pharmaceuticals, or roughly 2.2 percent of GDP. Given the enormous waste and corruption in the current system, it would be reasonable to expect that economists would be heavily involved in trying to design a better system.

But, you will find almost no economists even giving the issue of drug research any thought. By contrast, they get hysterical about the possibility that the Export-Import bank may not be reauthorized. The Ex-Im Bank may mean a great deal to Boeings profits, but its impact on the economy as a whole is less than one tenth as large as the amount of money at stake with patent monopolies on prescription drugs.

It would be great if a governor or other prominent figure in public life would be willing to put the public’s health and the economy ahead of the drug companies. It might not be as much fun as suing President Obama, but it would make a much bigger difference in people’s lives.

This article originally appeared on Al Jazeera.

The post Expensive Drugs And Medicaid – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Narendra Modi’s And Xi Jinping’s Historic Roles Amid Threats And Challenges – OpEd

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Citing Walter Lippmann, Peter Beinart says, ‘American foreign policy is “insolvent”. Our obligations exceed our power’. Beinart also confesses that American commitments have grown massively since the Cold War has ended, while the resources available to it from economic and military to ideological are more limited that they appear. This has led many people think that America is in decline.

But, a country with a continental size with an unparallelled reserve of economic and military power, scientific knowledge, human as well as and natural resources can ever slip to second-rate power. The great human and democratic values it upholds – although with some limitations, will always be taken — its grand contributions to humanity and no country can replace it from this role. As Zakaria says, it is just the rise of many and America must be proud that – so many countries are rising under the world political, economic and defense order it led after World War II.

No one can say or appeal for America to compromise with its vital national interests and its commitments towards its allies, simultaneously, as a great country; it must uphold its interests and alliance commitments. However, while doing so it must avoid undermining vital interests and national sentiment of other big or small powers and keep it away from counterproductive confrontation, or even conflict.

Many people talk about Asian Century, but it is hard to answer the question if Asia can establish itself or not. Viswanathan Shankar in Project Syndicate says, ‘seven of the world’s ten fastest-growing countries are in Africa’. Just before the U.S. Africa Leaders Summit, three African Presidents- Paul Kagme of Rwanda, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda have written an inspiring article in Project Syndicate on August 2, 2014. In the article, they have rightly claimed that the dream that the twenty-first century will be the “African Century” is also becoming reality in spite of the conflict and poverty in many African countries. They also admitted that African continent is more stable than ever before. Citing World Bank data, they have reiterated – Africa experiencing some of the highest economic growth rates anywhere on the planet.

On the other hand let us see Asia – from East to West it is living with the most turbulent times. Heightened tension between China and Japan – the two most powerful economies and major military powers of the continent, have created panic in the region. The militant Islamic organization – the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria ISIS – one of the Al Qaeda affiliates, is gaining power in Iraq and demonstrating its potential to destabilize the whole Middle East – already a volatile region. Recently it has taken control of Iraq’s largest hydroelectric dam on Iraq’s Tigris River and if decided to use the dam as strategic weapon, ISIS can create havoc from Mosul to Bagdad. A matter to note these days is that the crisis and terrorism extending in Africa, has roots in Asia.

Uncertainty is looming large over Afghanistan after US withdrawal as in Iraq. Analyst say- Iraq has been a battleground of proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Similarly, in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan play similar game and have increased trouble for Afghan people. Different ethnic groups with their roots in Pakistan and Central Asian countries are likely to create troubles for the region including India and China.

In the tribal border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) – the militant Muslim group fighting for the independence of Xinjiang province of China, are sheltered with the support of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups.

The Ukrainian crisis seems to bear deep impact on Asian relations. Although, its strategic implications are yet to be experienced, it is casting deep shadow over Russia’s relations with countries that have closer relations with America. For example, Japan and South Korea that were bridging their relations with Russia and were making a grand deal for the supply of natural gas have reached at a suspended crossroad.

While taking case of India and China, during the recent BRICKS Summit in Brazil, both India and China expressed their, awesome willingness to improve the relations between the two countries and exploit full potentials of the opportunities available to them in finest diplomatic language. In Brazil, to serve the interests of emerging economies, they also agreed to establish a new bank as an alternative to the U.S. and Western Europe dominated international financial agencies like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Contradictions in India and China Relations

Fortunately, India has most powerful Prime Minister only next to Jawaharlal Nehru – the first Prime Minister of India after independence in 1947. Similar is the case with China. President Xi Jinping is considered as the most powerful leader after Deng Xiaoping. Therefore, it is high time for both Modi and Jinping to exhibit their vision, courage, and will power to improve the relations between the two countries and expand it in the region they represent. However, the mindset of the state machinery they have to entrust to implement their vision, gives them limited scope to take great decisions in defining the relations of their countries with each other and clear their way to equip the two Asian giants with strength and capacity to lead the 21st Century.

One thing is clear, it is far easier to make an enemy and keep up with it. Friendship demands greater courage, commitment, and will power. Failures to invest these values will not only strip anyone from the advantages of better relations, but it will easily turn the relations into riskier animosity. Besides, contradictions within the state structures – may any times, play negatively to impede any major political process initiated to improve the relations.

Let us see few examples:

Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari’s was in Beijing as its state guest to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence developed by China’s Premier Zhou Enlai, India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Indonesia’s President Sukarno. Those principles commonly known as “Panch Sheel” later became the basic principles of the treaty signed between the two countries in 1954.

On June 28, when Ansari was still in Beijing China unveiled its new national map that marks China’s claimed territories in East China and South China Sea and the whole area of India’s Arunachal Pradesh within its national border.

Immediately, news appeared in Indian and international media that claimed Indian decision to give military training to people living in the border regions of Arunachal Pradesh.

Next, just five days after Narendra Modi returned from Brazil following the highly publicized meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping including their decision to establish a new bank, which they thought, will work as an alternative to World Bank – China’s Global Times, a publication of Chinese Communist Party, has published a highly critical article about Narendra Modi’s visit to Bhutan and its relations with India.

According to the Diplomat, the centerpiece of this issue is three territorial areas of dispute: The Jakarlung and Pasamlung valleys on the Bhutan-Chinese north-central border, and the Doklam plateau in Eastern Bhutan. All these territories have greater strategic significance for both China and India. While the Jakarlung and Pasamlung valleys are joined to Tibet, Doklam plateau in Bhutan is just next to the border of Indian state of Sikkim that is near to Siliguri Corridor known as Chicken’s Neck – a narrow stretch of land that links northeastern states of India including Arunachal Pradesh with rest of India. Similarly, Doklam plateau is adjacent to Chumbi valley in Tibet at the tri-junction of India, China, and Bhutan and therefore bears highly significant strategic significance to all the three countries.

Two days later on July 24, Global Times again published an article emphasizing the strategic significance of China’s railway links extending up to India, Nepal, and Bhutan border regions – mainly with a hint to India. There is no need to explain much about the publication of these two articles between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Bhutan and Nepal.

India and China: Living with the Common Threats of Terrorism

Besides other threats, as mentioned earlier terrorism has become a common threat to both India and China.

Take two cases – one in China and the other in India. According to a news story by Zachary Keck in The Diplomat, “All evidence suggests that China is losing its new war on Uyghur terrorism” in the natural resource rich western province of Xinjiang.

As the article says – earlier in May, Xinjiang’s Party chief Zhang Chunxian – after a spate of terrorist attacks across China starting late last year, announced about one-year campaign launched to “safeguard stability and resolutely prevent malignant violence and terrorist attacks”. The terrorists even murdered Juma Tahir, a Uyghur Imam just outside the main Mosque in Kashgar Prefecture in Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Imam was stabbed to death, as he was a staunch supporter of the establishment.

Only on the first month of the yearlong crackdown, South China Morning Post reported that 380 suspects were arrested, 32 violent terrorist gangs were broken up, 13 were executed, and some 264 devices capable of detonating 3.15 tons of explosives were confiscated.

Because of these events, in July- during Ramadan – the holy month of Muslim community, Chinese authorities in Xinjiang province banned Muslim students and civil servants from participating in the holiday, including forbidding fasting, and preaching and even reciting any religious texts, The Diplomat says.

India’s democracy might have adequacies, but its participatory nature, and the individual freedom, justice and security the Indian constitution has left no room to engage Muslim and other minority population in the mainstream political and social process.

Recently few Muslim youths of the well to do and highly educated family from the outskirts of Mumbai have reports of joining ISIS to defend Islam. They joined ISIS over the internet and it was a quite new dimension of terrorism in India.

Up to now, to express their rage against the Hindu majority, the established practice among the Muslim youth was simply to cross to Pakistan, receive training there from radical groups and the mavericks in army and security agencies running their own state within state, and return to India for terrorist activities. Ellen Barry and Mansi Choksiaug in the New York Times (August 4, 2014) have quoted a senior police official in Mumbai saying – “Trying to join the global war, it is quite a new thing”. The news story further quoting a concerned Muslim relatives of the missing boys say that that the generation of Muslim youths focus less on grievances toward India’s government and more on Islamic struggles in the Middle East.

Joint Responsibility of Modi and Jinping

On the auspices of Narendra Modi as India’s Prime Minister, South Asia has seen an unusually cordial atmosphere. India has initiated a new neighborhood policy that was reflected during his unusually successful visit to Nepal and Bhutan. He exhibited needed courage and confidence in addressing the concerns of its smaller neighbors. His master diplomatic stroke in inviting all the executive heads of South Asian countries during his swearing in ceremony signaled a new beginning in the region and is

Another encouraging development is seen in Indo Bangladesh border regime. According to Reuters, a U.N. tribunal has recently awarded Bangladesh nearly four-fifths of an area sprawling over some 25,000 sq km in the Bay of Bengal. This has ended a dispute over a sea border with India that has tangled the ties between the two countries for more than three decades. Surprisingly, it has satisfied both neighbors and it would help Narendra Modi to make a big dig in improving its relations with Bangladesh. The Indo- Bangladesh approach if could be applied in resolving China’s territorial disputes with Japan and its neighbors in East and South East Asia, it would help China a more peaceful vicinity to validate China’s claim of its peaceful rise. Ultimately, bigger is expected to make some bigger concessions and contributions. Realignments at the global level are taking place.

China and its leader Xi Jinping has played an excellent role in improving its role in Africa and Latin America, but bigger questions remain there – whether that diplomatic initiative are meant for the brutal exploitation of African natural resources to find raw materials for their ever-hungry Chinese industry or is also meant for the overall development of Africa.

The same thing applies to India to its contexts.

The U.S. is deeply concerned to improve its relation with Modi government in India. Amid diplomatic niceties, America is deeply worried about repairing the relations with India’s strongman to whom it had denied a visa in 2005. Investing deep trust and confidence between the world’s two largest democracies – is in the best interests of both countries, but it needs lots of courage and convictions and the U.S. government has yet to make a break through.

Recently, Russia – a long time strategic partner of India, has expressed its willingness to sell MI-35 – a multi-purpose military transport helicopter to Pakistan. It carries message for China and America – that were supplying almost all military weaponries and logistics to Pakistan. It also has strategic significance for India – world’s top arms buyer and Russia the largest arms supplier to India.

Disintegration of Soviet Union, in the short term, was the greatest political and strategic gains for the United States and Western Europe, but in the end, China has become the ultimate winner. Except in Eastern Europe, China has gained enormous influence in Central and South Asia, Latin America and Africa after Soviet Union collapsed.

How will the Ukraine crisis end is yet unknown. With its enormous reserve of good will in its relations with Russia, India can play a crucial role in bargaining peace for Ukraine and ensuring vital Russian interests in Eastern Europe. Deep economic interdependence between U.S. and China and can never allow them to confront against each other. The strategic logic of the last century can no more be copied and pasted, but someone has to invent new ideas, policies, strategies and logic and take the lead and convey the message to the world community. Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping can do it, because within few months and few days in power they have exhibited this.

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Snaring The ‘Big Tiger’ In Anti-Graft Campaign: Xi Asserts His Authority – Analysis

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China’s anti-corruption campaign has intensified with the investigation of ex-Politburo Standing Committee member and former head of public security, Zhou Yongkang. With this latest move against one of his fiercest rivals, Xi Jinping has given the clearest indication yet of his dominance of the top echelon of Chinese politics and may well have set the stage for future institutional reforms.

By James Char

ON THE 29th of July 2014, the Central Discipline and Inspection Commission (CCDI) in Beijing finally confirmed what had been an open secret in the Chinese political landscape: it announced that Zhou Yongkang – a member of the previous Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) – was under investigation for serious violations of the party constitution, a euphemism for corruption, thus sounding the death knell of one of China’s most feared political heavyweights.

In breaking with all precedents in indicting a former leader who had been on the top rung of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and thereby sending out the message to the party rank and file that no one was untouchable in the current anti-graft campaign, Xi Jinping has given a clear signal that the fight against corruption will be a hallmark of his administration. More significantly, Xi has also underscored his position as primus inter pares at the apex of China’s political leadership.

The Same Game But Different Players

After assuming the top party position in December 2012 Xi had emphasised the importance of cleaning up the party by bringing down both high-ranking and low-level “tigers and flies” within Chinese officialdom. According to a leaked cable from the US Embassy in Beijing, Xi had publicly expressed disdain for the “all-encompassing commercialisation of society”, singling out corruption as the biggest threat to the CCP and the Chinese nation.

Since the 18th Party Congress when Xi succeeded Hu Jintao as party leader, more than 30 officials of vice-ministerial rank or above as well as scores of lower-ranking bureaucrats from government and state-owned enterprises have come under investigation for either flouting the law or violating the party constitution.

Lodging official inquests into corrupt practices and abuse of power to remove one’s political rivals is neither a novel development nor peculiar to the current Chinese leader. Former CCP leaders Hu and Jiang Zemin – having ascended the top post – have similarly moved against adversaries who had threatened to undermine their influence.

The same can be said of Zhou’s case since it has been widely speculated that the former security czar had previously attempted to subvert Xi’s authority in the run-up to the leadership transition by pushing for his fallen acolyte – the disgraced former party secretary of Chongqing, Bo Xilai – to join the ranks of the top party leadership. In 2013, Bo himself was jailed on charges of abuse of power and corruption.

The high stakes involved in the political game between party elites is revealed by the protracted period between Bo’s downfall and the formal corruption inquiry into Zhou and his extended family. In the lead-up to Zhou’s public censure, it would appear that Xi has already weathered his rival’s counterattacks – one of which is believed to be a Bloomberg report in 2012 detailing the assets of Xi’s relatives. As the former leader in charge of public security, Zhou would have been well placed to gather information on others.

Patron-Client Ties in Chinese Politics

In officially denouncing Zhou last week, however, Xi Jinping may well have been flogging a dead tiger in view of the fact that Zhou’s powerbases – consisting of the Chinese public security apparatus; the provincial government of Sichuan; and the China National Petroleum Corporation – have progressively been dismantled since December 2012. Increasingly, Zhou had become politically isolated as his protégés from the different sectors fell one after another.

Nevertheless, it would be inaccurate to suggest that the current campaign has been organised by Xi to install his own followers in those positions of power vacated by the recent purges. In instigating formal investigations against someone as firmly established within the upper echelons of Chinese politics as Zhou had been, Xi would have already garnered the support of the majority of party elites.

With vested interests deeply entrenched within the network of Chinese political figures – current and retired – Xi would have also had to obtain the backing of his predecessors, Jiang and Hu, with the former being responsible for having elevated Zhou to his previous high position. The South China Morning Post in August last year had reported that the leadership had given their consent to move against Zhou at their summer conference in Beidaihe.

Xi Strengthens His Hand Further

While Zhou has similarly been accused of ‘serious disciplinary violations’, the practice of rooting out corruption is as much motivated by political machinations as improving the overall governance of a country in which official corruption appears to have become institutionalised.

In point of fact, the CCP’s anti-graft body, the CCDI – currently supervised by PBSC member Wang Qishan – reports directly to the party top brass. In a country rife with corruption, it is fair to surmise that the leadership headed by Xi would have had a say in identifying those personnel to be picked up by the CCDI for investigation.

While it remains unclear if the current campaign represents a genuine drive to purify the party, Xi’s latest action is expected to restore some legitimacy to the CCP in the middle term. The decision to dismiss one of the country’s former top leaders for allegedly misappropriating state assets is a shrewd move considering public anger at official corruption and excess has been seething for years. In so doing, Xi has also boosted his own political capital even further.

An hour after releasing its statement on Zhou, the CCP announced that it was holding the 4th Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee in October to discuss comprehensive legal reforms. It may be a while yet before it becomes clear whether the Zhou case marks a turning point for real institutional change in China. In snaring the big beast that is Zhou Yongkang, however, Xi has stamped his personal authority in Chinese elite politics and shown that he is no paper tiger.

James Char is a Research Analyst with the China Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

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